I was going to come up with a more concise title, but that didn’t feel on brand for me or for a post talking about Warhammer 40,000, so I went with one that feels pretty on brand for a game that gives us titles like “Necromunda: The Aranthian Succession – The Vaults of Temenos” or “Liber Mechanicum: Forces of the Omnissiah Army Book.” Okay, one of those is a Horus Heresy book, but they were the longest books when I turned around to look at my book shelf. There are longer, but I’m lazy.
This post is not about books.
It’s about what we wargamers / miniature collectors / hobbyists colloqually call “the pile of shame.” Some try to call it a pile of opportunity, or pile of opportunity, but they’re kidding themselves, we all know. All of us buy more models and miniatures than we will ever be able to play with or field or paint even if we managed to gain immortality or the kind of money that means you never have to worry about working again. Of course, seemingly, the problem with that money, if the current world is any indication and we haven’t managed to get the guillotines out yet, is that getting that much money only seems to make you want to get more money, burn the world, and screw over as many other people as possible. See… well, all of the billionaires.
I’ll never use all of these characters at once – in fact, I can’t. If I ever build a full Chapter, I will need 10 captains, so… I’m almost there. I’ve also got all of the “classic” Blood Angels characters in their itty-bitty Finecast forms, which is code for “terrible and too small.” There’s also the infamous Bladeguard Ancient – quite possibly the most common unpainted Space Marine in everyone’s collection. He’s sucked for all of 9th edition, and was in the launch box.
Anyway, tangent aside, I’ve got a stupid amount of unfinished models and a stupid amount of games that I won’t ever play. I’ve already got a habit of jumping into a game, never playing it, and getting rid of the game when I finally give up. I’ve written here about Fallout Wasteland Warfare, which I’ve since sold off completely. I’ve also picked up, and sold off, multiple Warhammer 40k armies, Warhammer Age of Sigmar armies, and whole tabletop games (Conquest, Star Wars Armada, Blood Bowl).
Decision making in this realm may not be my strong suit.
There has been a pretty consistent line throughout all of it, though, and that’s my Blood Angels army that kicked off me getting back into Warhammer when the pandemic started and I was stuck inside, and has been around as the Pandemic continued but we have pretended it ended and I just stayed inside. My vampire boys weren’t my first 40k army… that was actually Eldar back in the early editions, but they were the Space Marine faction I’d started way back when and never got around to painting well.
I love tanks, and was recently vindicated in this from a lore perspective. The book “First Founding” by Black Library specifically called out that the Blood Angels have always had a larger armor pool than most chapters, despite their reputation for close combat. Here, we have three Sicaran Tanks – all resin bricks from ForgeWorld that have since started to come out in plastic, the classic Blood Angels Baal Predator I’ve never gotten around to painting, and a Repulsor – one of the newest Space Marine Primaris tanks.
There are a lot of reasons I went for them… I like the look, the lore, the backstory. And for some really strange reason, if you know what my background and beliefs are, I really like the motif of Angels and stuff like that. So the Angels of Death – the name given to two chapters of Space Marines, the Blood Angels and Dark Angels, have always been my jam. The Vampire Boys (which it talked about in our Advent Calendar run through last year) in particular lean into this extra hard, given that their Primarch was a literal Angel, their elite guard wears winged jetpacks, and they strap jetpacks on to everything to descend from the sky.
Warhammer 40,000 is not a game of subtlety.
My Blood Angels army was started as a Crusade force for a league at my local store, and has just grown along the way. I’m by no means a great painter… my shirt “world’s okayest miniature painter” is quite truthful. I paint to get miniatures on the tabletop and looking pretty good, and that’s about it. I’m always looking to improve and get better, but won’t be winning awards, or trying to win awards, anytime soon.
Back to that pile of shame, though… one of the things about playing the game, and a weird thing about Warhammer and Games Workshop games in particular, is how much of their customer base only buys models for the hobby aspect, and not the game aspect. Or how many only want the game aspect and don’t care about the hobby. To be across both like I am is fairly rare, and as I get older I need to acknowledge that I’m probably more hobby than gaming just because I don’t have time, even if I buy like I play 40 hours a day, every day.
Another “every Space Marine Player has some of these selection” – this is dominated by the remnants of my Indomitus boxes, which I’ve had since summer of 2020 and never finished. Outriders and Assault Intercessors were both a big part of that box. I’ve actually painted A LOT of Assault Intercessors, these I’m just repainting because they looked awful, so I stripped them and rebased coated. Five regular Intercessors, which round out the big squads, heavy Intercessors, and the Death Company which have been just primed black forever, make up the rest.
This means I have a collection of models that I could field to play a bunch of different armies if I wanted, including three different space marine chapters: Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Ultramarines. The Dark Angels are a relatively new addition, because I wanted to build a full Angels of Death force that fit with the “Arks of Omen” lore established at the end of 9th edition… basically the stories currently going on in game. The Ultramarines are there because they’re the default guys and you just get some, but also because I wanted to paint something blue, have a subscription to a monthly service called Imperium Magazine that’s sending me stuff, and it’s just something to have. The three armies play differently, and I like painting space marines, and this also lets me have loaner armies… in theory, if I finished painting them all.
Right now, about 2/3rds of my 40k Blood Angels* are fully painted, based (the stands are decorated and painted), and battle ready. Recently, Games Workshop announced the next edition of the game coming out, 10th edition, and with it, a whole slew of new models and releases. Yeah, I’m a sucker, and I’m going to buy those models. Currently, the rumor is that they’ll go up for preorder in a month, on June 10th, and get released on June 24th. Which leaves about a month and a half before the next edition, and all of the new fancy Space Marines, come out.
*This qualifier is important, because I have some Horus Heresy (30k) Blood Angels that aren’t fully painted, and I don’t feel as rushed to finish them since I can’t field them in games of 40k.
I have a bunch of Blood Angels and I’m going to buy more. I don’t care. In theory, a Codex Compliant – a chapter that’s built according to the rules laid down after the heresy, has no more than 1,000 ish marines, divided up into 10 companies of 100 marines each. I’m well, well short of a full thousand. But if I paint everything, I’m likely getting pretty close to at least two and a half chapters. Blood Angels are a mostly compliant chapter. Most chapters are somewhat loose in how they organize their first company of veterans, because the life of a Space Marine is violent and unlikely to last to veteran status. That means they don’t count them in the full number a lot if there happen to be a lot around.
This represents the stuff that I have that’s closest to done… most of it just needs finishing touches, washes, basing, or things like that. Assault Marines, Infiltrators, Incursors, Rievers, and some Desolation Marines all are very close to done. A big Brutalis Dreadnought in the back just wants to give (pointy) hugs, while his two Dreadnought friends are just base coated but honestly don’t need much. The Warsuit behind everyone I’ve had for ages but never felt the need to field, because it’s just objectively worse than the Dreadnoughts that cost the same. Fun little fact about this picture, the oldest Warhammer 40k Space Marine model I own is in here… the Attack Bike is the tiny metal version from the late 90s.
My marines are painted up as part of the 1st (Veterans), 3rd, and 4th companies – or they will be expanding in those directions. Someday, I’m going to get a full chapter assembled and painted, it will be glorious and stupid and pointless, but that’s not what this is all about. This is about trying to get through that other 1/3rd that’s unpainted, partially painted, or just not done yet.
So this is about trying to get through the miniatures that I put in the pictures throughout this post that are unfinished, and probably posting some status updates over the next few weeks to see if I can actually do it. You know, before I dump another pile on top of my already substantial pile of shame.
Because I’m not counting my Dark Angels, Ultramarines, Necrons, Eldar, Orks, Stormcast Eternals, Gloomspite Gitz, Kharadon Overlords (which aren’t even assembled), Lumineth Realmlords, the Van Saar and Escher gangs for Necromunda, the Grand Army of the Republic, my Imperial army lead by Darth Vader, those plucky Rebels, the upcoming Shatterpoint release, all of the Marvel Crisis Protocol stuff, several kill teams, tons of terrain, a Tau Empire force, or the aforementioned Horus Heresy Blood Angels.
Maybe “pile” isn’t an accurate term for my shame.
Here’s the full accounting of what’s left to paint in my Blood Angels army, and what’s all left to go with it. 137 models total, with an average of 40% finished. A lot of them are really close. I’m not going to count getting transfers on them as done, as I tend to do that well after the fact, but I am going to count getting them based. As unfinished bases are gross looking. For some shorthand here… 10% means it’s primed (everything is primed at least), 20% means I’ve put down a quick single basecoat color (probably red), 50% to 60% means I’ve probably done most basecoat and need to clean up and layer it, while 80% is in the tidy up and basing phase.
It’s the in vogue thing to do to remember the year before it ends, but we’re not the most punctual here at FBTB, or more accurately, we all have lives and things to do, so we’re doing it after the first of the year. We have the recap post for our calendar still going to, just waiting for the final little touches as well, so start placing your bets on what month we’ll get that posted. My money is on March.
I’m not sure that anyone is really going to mourn 2022, any more than we’re going to miss 2021, 2020, or the jokes about how this is just 2020 part 4 starting or whatever. Last year was a tire fire, because that’s the only type of year we get anymore. COVID is still a thing no matter how much we ignore it – and we got to add Monkeypox (yep, that was last year), Super-Strep, RSV, and so many other things on top of that along with it. Reading the news is more about “what is the scandal today” instead of being shocked by the news.
We all cope in our own ways, through so many nerdy things, and I covered in my calendar review that a good deal of my tastes have changed in recent years. I don’t collect LEGO, and haven’t for some time. I do collect Warhammer, miniatures, and buy lots of things I don’t use a lot of. So, a lot of things haven’t changed.
All that aside, 2022 wasn’t exactly an a terrible year for me. A lot of it, really, was mostly meh. My kids are doing good, and getting big. I’ll be talking about them plenty in here, because they’re influencing a lot of my choices anymore. I’m not going to talk about “New Years” resolutions in here, because I think they are stupid and you shouldn’t wait for an arbitrary day to improve yourself – that’s why my weight loss and health improvement plan started back in August. As of this writing, there is a third less of me in the world, and that’s always a good thing. There was entirely too much Nick around.
That was my huge focus of the past few months, far more than gaming or anything else. Still working, and worrying, and anxiety, and every thing else, but mostly, just surviving, which is what everyone does anymore.
LEGO and other Toys
You know what, I bought more LEGO in 2022, for myself or for review, than I had in years. The AT-ST wasn’t even among that, because Ace sent that to me for review. Also, yes, I know, the Hoth AT-ST is different – still don’t care, my point about it being super niche is valid and sort of emphasizes that point. There are a bunch of sets I’ve snapped pictures for, and need to write reviews for, in the near future… it was going to come out after the advents.
Shockingly, most of the sets are Star Wars, so you’ll have to wait and see. Nothing ground breaking, just chances for me to rant a bit. I got one big set in there, but I haven’t opened it yet. I also built one big set that I purchased last year and never got around to opening, so it will probably be the first review that I do. Yeah, I’m being vague. That’s what makes it so suspenseful!
For other toys… I don’t know that I bought any, honestly. At least not any that weren’t an advent calendar or for a tabletop game. I don’t get action figures, and have sold off all of mine. I don’t even have any display shelves set up around me anymore, because I just don’t have the space for it. Truth is, I’m over most collectable swag and tat. It just takes up space, and don’t care for it.
Movies, TV (Honestly, Streaming)
So, I was going through the history of our posts to remember what I watched last year, to see that the Media post never got published because someone *cough* Ace *cough* never finished his part in it. Funny thing is that what I did last year also really reflected in this year.
I had to dig through a lot of my streaming history to figure out if I actually watched a full, proper movie this year. My wife and I watched Parasite at one point, finally. I watched The Adam Project last March. We watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation every year for Christmas. I wouldn’t qualify the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special as a movie, but I did finally watch it. I don’t really count the dozens of movies I watched on Rifftrax and Mystery Science Theater 3000, but there are also those. Movie-wise, that’s about it. I didn’t watch any Marvel movies, or even rewatch any Marvel movies. I skimmed and skipped around a few Star Wars movies for reference, but that was more to find individual things.
One thing I did not do, and never even made plans to do, was to go to a theater. Theaters, in general, are a thing that I don’t really enjoy. They’re too expensive, for me at least, especially around here. Taking my wife and kids to the movie, with popcorn, candy, and drinks, can very easily get above $100 for a matinee show. That being said, I know I’m going to at least one movie this year… the Super Mario Movie. My son is just crazy into Mario now, and honestly, I don’t think it looks all that bad. Disposable popcorn fare, sure, but that’s most movies to me anymore.
That’s not to say I didn’t watch anything, though. I don’t watch movies, but I consumed a lot of shows and streaming this year. It’s easy to make jokes about how subscription services are just the new cable (and I’m pretty sure I made that point in articles years ago – this is basically what we were always going to get with the demand that we just be able to buy the channels we want). I have the Disney Plus subscription with Hulu, but also carry Paramount+ (because Star Trek and my son’s other favorite, Paw Patrol),
Because we never posted our 2021 list – so I didn’t share the stuff that I discovered and started watching last year. Letterkenny, The Witcher, Only Murders in the Building, and What We Do in the Shadows were the shows that I started watching and loved in 2021, and they all got new seasons in 2022 (or very late 2021 and again in very late 2022 for Letterkenny).
Peacemaker
This may be the most NSFW thing I’ve ever shared on the site. Seriously, do not watch this around… anyone.
I commented in my Advent Calendar Review that I didn’t watch a lot of comic stuff this year, or at least I didn’t watch a lot of Marvel comic stuff. I’d caught up on all the Marvel series last year through Hawkeye, which I really enjoyed (enough that it was on my 2021 list), but I’m just sort of over the MCU at this point. How do you get to Endgame and then keep upping the stakes? It gets tiring.
You know what I did love, enough that I’ve watched it three times? Peacemaker. I’m not exactly enthused for Gunn’s actions on DC and all the stuff he’s done (even if it means that I get Cavill producing a Warhammer 40k universe launch over on Amazon). I never got around to reviewing it – and I really should – but I watched and actually liked the Snyder Justice League redo. Which is shocking, because I rather disliked Batman v Superman. I watched the Suicide Squad movie Gunn did, and it was… fine. The standout character in it was most certainly John Cena’s Peacemaker, who was the answer to the question “what would it be like if Captain America was a complete asshole?” – not like US Patriot, that’s more like misguided. This is taking the best and worse and going to 11. It’s honestly hard to describe.
The stinger at the end of the movie where he seemingly died (I mean, spoilers, I guess, for a two year old film) set up the show, released at the start of 2022, and a lot of people were skeptical – myself included. Cena was a wrestler turned actor, and could he carry a show? The answer to that is a resounding yes. Not just in action, but there is absolute depth and so many facets to the characters on the show that you just need to watch. Peacemaker was an asshole you were supposed to hate in Suicide Squad, and you do, and still will, in the show. But you will also understand, hate, sympathize, and start to love him too. All of them, at once. There isn’t a weak performance on the show (well, except one unfortunate cameo at the end – but that’s more because of the actor).
That and he plays piano on the show. It’s a brief scene, but it’s actually Cena doing it, and he taught himself to do it, just because he wanted to. That’s pretty cool.
Shoresy
I mentioned Letterkenny above, and I love that show – even if the recently released Season 11 is probably their weakest season. Still funny, absolutely, but lacking in the overall cohesive humor that most have. This past year also had the first big spinoff (other than the animated one from the main show) – Shoresy, starring Jared Kelso’s (show creator and the main character Wayne in Letterkenny) background character Shorsey leaving town and playing hockey elsewhere. On the main show, he was simply the comic character that was there to make fun of two other hockey players, Riely and Jonsey… you just sort of have to watch, and we never saw his face. It was just a running gag of him talking in a funny, high voice and often appearing bare-assed on screen and making “your mom” jokes.
That’s what makes the spinoff show such a surprise. The crude and lowbrow humor is most certainly still there. It’s an essential part of what makes these things work. Humor that’s so basic yet sophisticated, full of fart and poop jokes that are somehow layered. More than that, though, compared to Letterkenny, this short series has a cohesive storyline and plot that runs through the season, and it gives both Kelso and the cast a lot more to do and act around. There’s depth to the characters that we don’t get in the main show. That’s not a knock on Letterkenny, because that’s part of the charm… the simplicity is the whole purpose of the small town, and often the reason the depth they have is simply stated and just happens.
It’s all very, very Canadian – and continues that strange trend of how Canada has something like fifty thousand TV shows and only a thousand actors. Like everything Kelso does, it filmed on location in Canada, used a lot of Native actors for Native roles (far more than Letterkenny does, even), but kept the things that work well from the other show.
Ted Lasso
My wife and I were late to the game for Ted Lasso, and that sort of works in our favor. We missed the initial hype and the backlash that comes with all popular shows, so we got to enjoy it a lot. It’s surprisingly deep and enjoyable, a lot more than you’d think at first glance, and doesn’t shy away from some of the gut punches. Problem is that now we are on the boat with everyone else in wondering when season 3 is coming out. They missed the World Cup premiere, which seemed like the perfect time, and Apple isn’t known for actually… sharing anything.
Star Trek: Prodigy
This was… such a weird year for Star Trek. Discovery Season 4 started at the end of 2021 and… wasn’t great? I like Discovery, and anyone who feels like whining about new Trek can just go pound sand and continue to be delusional (and likely ignore the fact that they’re just repeating the same things said when TNG, DS9, and Voyager all came out). The actors in it are fantastic and I love the ship. Short Treks is legit fun and it brought that to us. But the latest season was uneven and rushed at best, and the story was just not all that enjoyable.
Picard Season 2, which followed it was, and this is hard for me to say as an unabashed lover of Patrick Stewart and TNG, probably the worst Star Trek ever made this side of the Enterprise finale. I hated watching it, the plot, and just what it was doing. The whole idea of “let’s take the world right now, go two years in the future, and make it a little bit worse” was just bad. So very, very bad. Also, let’s give Picard some more secret Trauma, because the guy who’s been captured and tortured by the Cardassians and the Borg, used by the Borg to murder tens of thousands of his fellow Starfleet crewmen, and subject to dozens of other real and known things clearly needed more. It was just awful.
Following on that, thankfully, we got Strange New Worlds, which gave us the thing that will make it so I will never hate Discovery no matter what it does, Anson Mount as Christopher Pike and the Enterprise pre-Kirk (well, mostly). This show was such a revelation and absolutely wonderful. We’re talking more of a shift going from The Motion Picture to Wrath of Khan. This is like going from Star Wars’ Holiday Special to Empire Strikes Back (which, I guess, also happened). That was quickly followed by Lower Decks, which is my favorite of the new Treks and gave us the wonderful DS9 episode everyone needs to watch.
But this entry is about Prodigy, the Star Trek show aimed at kids and launched under the Nickelodeon brand. Everything about that sentence gave me pause, and led me to ignore it at first. And I did, until the next entry on my list got me to change my mind because I rapidly consumed everything I could and needed a next thing to watch.
It has an uneven start, at least to an adult, because the thing you need to remind yourself is that it’s a kid’s show. It’s also a Star Trek show, and uneven starts and iffy first seasons are kind of what they do (unless you’re Strange New Worlds or Lower Decks – or parts of Voyager* and DS9**). The focal character, Dal, is extremely annoying when you meet him, something that doesn’t really change over several episodes. But that’s also kind of the point – the whole first season is about growth and change of these kids.
Watching through the whole season, it’s hard to overstate just how well Prodigy captures the spirit of what Star Trek is, and how well the main characters exemplify it. The voice acting on the show, across the board, is superb, but a special callout for the incredible job that Kate Mulgrew does as Kathryn Janeways (not a typo). There is more character development and growth across the first season than in any other first season of Trek, and honestly, I’m willing to call it the best first season of Trek that’s ever been done. Yes, even better than Lower Deck’s season 1.
*It was short, mostly because a chunk of the season one episodes were sprinkled in at the start of season 2, but overall more good than bad.
**Emissary, Duet, In the Hands of the Prophets are all in the first season. So is The Forsaken, which has the absolute best moment you’ll ever get with Lwaxana Troi
Andor
I saved this one for last, because, holy crap. Just… holy crap. This is something we should review – not just because it’s Star Wars, but because I want an excuse to watch it all again. I’d been fairly burnt out on Star Wars since Rise of Skywalker crapped its way on to movie screens everywhere. I love Mandalorian, and I even liked Boba Fett, but they were also the sort of thing that I watched and was just kind of done with. I hadn’t gotten around to Resistance or Bad Batch, because of said burnout, and never got around to Obi-Wan either until after I started watching Andor and then it all just sort of exploded for me.
I went back and immediately watched Obi-Wan (I enjoyed it, it’s fine, but more disposable) and Bad Batch (much better, and kind of like shades of seeing what is to come). Then I watched Andor again, because it’s absolutely amazing, and it makes you want to dive into the deep with Star Wars. It’s hard to dig into it too much without spoilers, and maybe I’ll do a third watch through to cover it here, because any show that makes woodwind-based marching band music tense-as-hell deserves your attention.
Video Games
2022 was a very strange year for Video Games for me. I… for about 95% of the year, I played the same few games I always paly – Call of Duty, sprinkled in with a bit of Star Trek Online and even a little bit of Star Wars the Old Republic. At some point in the middle of the year, the PlayStation 5 I’d ordered months before hand showed up and surprised me, so there was that, and I played Horizon Forbidden West for a bit before getting distracted. I never really went back to it.
Part of the problem is that this year, my five-year-old son discovered two things: the Nintendo Switch and Super Mario games. The Switch, and by extension, the TV, have apparently become his now. So I don’t get on the TV all that much, as it’s shared between the whole family. I can jump on late at night, but don’t tend to. Most of my gaming as of late has been on the PC, and that just tends to be my guilty pleasure games, like throwing money to the terrible beast of Activision|Blizzard with CoD and World of Warcraft (yeah, I know, no ethical consumption in capitalism and all that… sometimes you just have to take the slime to make it so your brain can deal with the other crap).
But at the end of the year, a few things changed. I decided I was going to do a couple of upgrades to my PC, which was pushing about four years old, and nabbed a deal for some parts. I may have also gone… a bit all out. I was able to get a bundle that put me at the top-edge of the AMD world, which, yeah, there are some trade-offs for that, but also, some upsides. So now I’m sitting on a Ryzen 7950X and a 7900XTX video card that can heat up my room pretty well when I feel like pushing it.
My old rig was fine, it could still play any game out there, not even hitting the bottom rung of requirements. I have a PS5 and Xbox One X (though, aforementioned TV sharing issues – and we’re that weird family who only has one TV), but haven’t had a whole lot of things grabbing my attention on consoles as of late.
Weirdly, the game that grabbed my attention and got me playing games again, admittedly after my computer upgrade (which wasn’t just about gaming, it was about a lot of other work too, and turning the old parts into a home server and storage box). It doesn’t come close to pushing this new machine. Or my old machine. Or my Steam Deck. Or my iPad.
Vampire Survivors
That game is Vampire Survivors, and it is amazing. It’s a game that has no business working as well as it does. It’s vaguely a rogue-like survival game, two genres which I don’t generally get all that enthused for (though I loved Hades last year). It’s an auto-attacker style game, which means you basically don’t do anything other than move. The graphics are all pixel-based and very basic, and it’s firmly in the indie scene.
This starts to go a lot worse for me in a bit
The design of the game is also built on top of a whole lot of gambling mechanics – the developer worked in the gambling and casino industry… but that’s the whole twist of the game. It’s random and hits like a slot machine, but there are no transactional elements to it. None whatsoever, and it’s designed to prevent it. In fact, the developer, in seeing that people were making crap knockoffs of the game and uploading them on mobile platforms, just went and developed a version and released it for free on iOS and Android. There are two optional ads that can be watched to support it – one to get a rez, one to get a bonus reward at the end. And that’s it.
Sometimes, the game just decides it wants you dead. I swear, my character is in there somewhere.
On PC, Mac, and consoles, it’s worth every cent. It’s a satisfying gameplay loop, and even though it looks like there’s just a little bit of content, but that’s not even close to true. See, the game is a true throwback, because it decides to do something quaint, and reward you for playing.
You unlock characters by playing and doing things. You unlock stages by playing and doing things. You unlock different music by playing and doing things. Remember when that’s how you got stuff, and it wasn’t just a charge, or DLC, or something like that? Remember when you didn’t have to buy boosters or level bonus helpers or assistants or season passes? Remember when a game was just a game?
It’s so satisfying for there to be a mechanic that’s just about rewarding you for opening something you earn in the game, and giving you something. And that’s it!
Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters
Square|Enix is a company that spent all of 2022 going “hold my beer” to every video game company getting bad press. They sold off most of their non-Final Fantasy games, have decided that NFTs are the future (spoiler: they are not, they have, and always will be, a ponzi scheme at best to sell to idiots, and if you like them or want to defend them, you are also an idiot). They’re still doing that, and even though Actiblizz is a shitshow, Ubisoft is just… terrible, EA predatory, Nintendo anti-competitive, and Microsoft is the Borg… Square|Enix somehow ends up being worse.
Their business model, going forward, seems to be basically re-re-re-re-releasing the same things over and over. Luckily, though, they finally, at long last, released the Pixel Remaster versions on platforms other than the PC and mobile – hitting both Playstation and Switch in December (not coming to Xbox, sadly). To celebrate, they ended up on a very good sale on PC, and they work great on the Steam Deck, which as I mentioned above, I had picked up around Christmas. I’m likely going to end up writing about it because I got it for a pretty specific reason, which I’ve written about before here.
I love these games, though, they’re a huge part of my childhood, so getting to play through them again is a big bonus. I’ve played through them on my iOS devices, and… they’re fine. But they belong on a console and controller. And now they can be.
Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West
I barely played one of these (Forbidden West), but have spent quite a bit of time playing the other – on my new computer build. I’d played the original game a lot on my PS4, it was fantastic and one of my favorite games of that whole generation. It’s been a great game to go back and just enjoy for the fun of it. I don’t have a whole lot to say on it, really, other than it’s weird to see Sony be slowly, begrudgingly, drug into the reality of supporting things outside of their console world.
Also, I’m eventually going to get around to playing more Forbidden West, really. It was a good game. Also, I need to play the new God of War.
Tabletop and Books
If my Advent Calendar stuff wasn’t a hint, the tabletop was where I put a good portion of my year. Warhammer 40k and its offshoot games like Kill Team and Necromunda were my big mini games, along with a little bit of Age of Sigmar (the fantasy version), continued dabbling with Star Wars Legion and Marvel Crisis Protocol continuing, and completely checking out of Fallout Wasteland Warfare as well as a large chunk of my Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures (well before all of the kerfuffle with the OGL stuff, but more on that later).
The first army I’m working on this year is my Necron force. They’re a great representation of the state of my hobby, as I’ve had a lot of these minis since I got back into 40k back when the Pandemic started…
I also completely exited the 3D printing hobby – I just realized that it’s not something I like or enjoy doing. I really enjoy the maker space, I do, and I like dabbling and working with things. I am still going to do those things… but printing just isn’t here yet. It’s interesting, and it can be fun, but it’s also frustrating, messy, time consuming, and expensive. You end up spending more time troubleshooting, tweaking, and repairing than you do actually printing. Especially when you deal with the consumer-grade end of the spectrum. The support of companies that are big in the space are just the worst to deal with for what one would charitably call support.
I also don’t print things for my main tabletop games – yeah, Warhammer is a very expensive hobby. So is LEGO. Much like how that doesn’t justify going out and stealing sets, or buying knock-off sets, it doesn’t justify buying recasts or the pure knockoffs either. Companies like LEGO and GW are not our friends, and they don’t need or have to price things to “be nice” or “fair.” Capitalism sucks, and it is inherently predatory. Those companies exist to make money, and they will often do baffling and annoying things, but the option for us is to always just “not buy it” and “not participate.”
Some of these were painted in 2021, some of them were painted in 2022. What can I say, I like tanks.
I don’t really begrudge the people who want to go and print custom armies, and have no issue with custom terrain or bits or the like – or even printing models for stuff that’s out of print. Where I take issue is when people start doing it instead of purchasing the products from smaller local stores that are the lifeblood of the hobby and local scene. Often with the justification of “I buy my paints there to support them.” Yeah, buying $20 worth of paints doesn’t make up for the amount those stores makes up off even one model kit, let alone an army. Support your local stores, even when that means you also have to buy from the company that kind of sucks. Unless that company is Wizards of the Coast, because f*** them.
The year was started by working on my Orks. I didn’t finish them, but did get a fair number of them painted. Sadly, they got kinda nerfed pretty bad, but have since come back, so may have to dust them off. The picture is also blurry because I focused on the wrong thing but I’m not going to fix it. Cause I’m lazy.
I played some Dungeons and Dragons this year, but my big, long-running homebrew campaign wrapped up late last year and I never started up another one as a DM. I sort of took the time off and haven’t worked on my homebrew setting at all. I sometimes miss it, but I often don’t, because it’s just so much extra work. Gaming while adult is hard… and goes something like this:
When is everyone free? Okay, how about three weeks from now. Okay, let’s plan on that, I’ll send out something, let’s plan for this time. Send reminders for the next couple of week. Get notices at the last minute that people can’t make it. Frantically reschedule at the last minute. Shocked messages from a couple others that it was happening. Game gets postponed. Repeat process.
I have a group online where we do get together, but life just gets in the way, and our campaign became two or three mini-campaigns, one-shots, and things to try out. We did a little Spelljammer, a bit of Eberron, some stuff in the Critical Role setting, and a little bit of a custom world. I’m thinking of running some stuff this year with my fairly deep collection of other systems, like Star Trek Adventures, the Star Wars Narrative Dice System (Edge of the Empire / Age of Rebellion / Force and Destiny), Pathfinder, Starfinder, or maybe even some old-school D&D.
This is a small sample of some of the potential books. What should I start with here, what would people like to see? Leave a comment or hit us up on the Discord and let me know.
That was actually one of the things I was doing a lot of this year it was trying to hunt down, collect, and purchase older RPG, hobby, and general nerdy books. In part, because they’re just make me happy and bring up a lot of memories. But also, because I’m considering using them as part of a new content series, maybe something like Bothan Book Club or maybe Midlife Nerd Crisis or something like that. Doing Book Reviews or something like that for ancient books or old content, maybe torturing myself with old Extended Universe books, that sort of thing.
Looking Forward to 2023
I mean, it’s already 2023, so this is maybe looking down more than looking forward, so who knows. Last year, I put in a general rule of “not watching trailers” for a whole lot of stuff – especially for TV and Movies. I don’t know that I watched a movie trailer on purpose last year… if it happened, it was because I was watching something where it was on and couldn’t be skipped (like a football game in a commercial, etc.). They’re often too packaged or don’t represent what’s coming… that or, honestly, I just want to be surprised.
I don’t even really care about spoilers (which are often unavoidable); in fact, if I know I’m not going to see something, which I usually won’t, I’ll just go spoil it for myself. But I want the experience to unfold in watching something, without the context or bias of the trailer. What that all means is that… I don’t really have any movies or shows I’m just waiting for, except for the next season of shows that I’ve already watched. Most don’t even have announcements yet. Shorsey is getting its second season in May, and eventually Ted Lasso is going to get it’s third and final season (which makes me a bit sad, but also I’m glad they’re just ending it).
Picard Season 3 starts very soon, hopefully it doesn’t suck out loud like season 2 did, and there is more Trek coming after that I’m sure. I’m more excited about Mandalorian Season 3 coming back, and I put the trailer above, but going to be honest – I haven’t watched it (and won’t watch it). I’m going in as blind as possible to the show. We don’t know when Andor is starting back up, but oh my god, I will probably wake up in the middle of the night to watch the premier episode. We just got word that King of the Hill is returning, and so is Futurama, both on Hulu, but neither have a date and I don’t expect either to be this year.
On the tabletop… things are kind of weird. Dungeons & Dragons maker Wizards of the Coast recent just absolutely crapped all over the bed and pissed off a huge chunk of their fans by giving them the finger, telling them all they were worth is their money, and saying they were going to shut down all the stuff they loved. Then being arrogant and declaring victory after it was revealed that about 90% of 3rd party creators would not use their new system.
For my part, I’m likely going to fully embrace the worlds of Paizo and their Pathfinder Second Edition system as my fantasy tabletop game of choice. I didn’t mesh with Pathfinder 2E initially, but will give it another go and try to adapt my homebrew world to it. Yes, it’s currently published under the original OGL, which Wizards has now backtracked on and released under the Creative Commons license.
The issue is that Wizards has lost all trust, and it’s clear that their next product is meant to kill off the existing game, their online tool Beyond D&D, and all of the purchased and created content. So whatever they’re making is bad for players and bad for the game – clearly, whatever is coming is a dead-end product and should be avoided. That means that other things are in order and it’s time to try them.
For video games, I don’t keep up on a lot of the upcoming releases. I know that Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is coming out, and I’m tentatively looking forward to it. It’s still an EA game, and somehow they became the least evil company out there because they only do old fashioned evil and not all of the new abusive evil. There’s a new Legends of Zelda game we still know next to nothing about, and I probably will have to invest in a second switch by then because my kids have totally co-opted my Switch as their own.
I’ve poked around all of the LEGO stuff… and yeah, not a whole lot that I’m likely to buy unless it’s explicitly for a review or they happen to make something that’s a big space set (which seems unlikely) or an old video game or computer system (also unlikely, because there’s not a lot left to mine there I don’t think). Mostly, I think, I’m just sort of keeping my 2023 open and going to be pleasantly surprised when something excites me and not let down because I didn’t set a lot of expectations.
What a year. I think it’s safe to say all of us are looking forward to not being in 2021 anymore. I (Eric) am optimistic, but I was optimistic for 2020, and we see where that got us. As per usual, we wrap up our years by talking about our favorite video games that we’ve played. I’m making a small addendum to this, however: let’s throw in tabletop games. I know Ace and Nick are really into them, and I’ve played a ton this year via Tabletop Simulator.
Without further ado, let’s get this thing started.
Ace’s Picks
The year 2021 was/is a bit of haze for me in terms trying to remember what games I’ve played. I do remember a few: Shadow of the Colossus, A Plague Tale: Innocence, Song of the Deep. But there were only two games I want to write about.
Video Game of the Year: Returnal
I only started playing Returnal last week, but it is my game of the year. It’s my first roguelike (or rogue-lite, whatever, I don’t want to get into that but you can read this if you’re just as confused about the differences as I am) and I am hooked. I started the game completely blind, as in I had no idea what the story was, how to play, what the objectives were, or anything. I only knew that the developer, Housemarque, was acquired by Sony to join the Playstation Studios family. I don’t think they’d do that if the game sucked. And I also had a vague notion that it was a Groundhog Day kind of game. The trailer was enough to get me excited so I bought it digitally when it was on sale a while ago but finally dove in last week. And am I having a blast.
Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect or how to play. I just figured things out as I went along. At it’s core, it’s a hack’n’slash game with an element of Groundhog Day. Every time you die, you start over at the beginning where you crash land on an alien planet. From the crash site, you move into the next zone dispatching the alien creatures that want to kill you and picking up consumables and upgrades along the way. You move onto the next zone and rinse and repeat, all the while trying to unlock the secrets of the planet and why you’re stuck in this endless loop.
It took I don’t know how many death cycles, but I finally figured out what all the glowing stuff was and how to kill all the monsters efficiently.
It sounds relentless and repetitive but it’s not. Each run is a learning experience. You gain familiarity with the different zones. I haven’t gotten very far in the game so there’s only a handful of them for me right now. But knowing the map helps when it comes time to clear the area of monsters. And knowing the monsters is another learning experience. Memorizing both their attack patterns and the particular room you’re in will have you eliminating them like a pro. Combining jumping, dashing, melee and ranged attacked will come naturally for you so while a room may spawn a ton of baddies, you’ll soon reach a point where killing them becomes second nature and, most importantly fun!
Just about every pick-up in any given cycle is crucial for survival.
The game earns its roguelike label from each death you experience. The layout of the zones you go through change with every reset with the only constant being the crash site. Weapon upgrades, monster drops, consumables, and other pick-ups are completely randomized as well so no two runs are exactly the same. You lose almost all of your upgrades and consumable with every death but there are some upgrades that persist through to the next cycle. However, those are few and far between. Returnal takes this repetitive cycle to heart and weaves this into the overall story. Your character has a certain level of self-awareness of being stuck in a cycle and is trying to unlock the how and why through memories and found scout logs, logs left behind by other versions of herself.
Housemarque really leans into the neverending cycle theme. There’s an online component to the game where a scout’s death by another player can be downloaded to your game. Every once in a while you’ll come across a deceased scout that you can scan. The scan will replay the last few moments of the scout before its death and show how the scout died. After which you can scavenge the body for loot or avenge its death by fighting an alien monster. A successful avenging will net you Ether, an in-game type of currency. The avenged player will get a notification and receive some sort of pick-up item. This works the same way for you too. Your death will be shared automatically with other players if your settings allow it. And if your death was successfully avenged, you’ll be able to receive a pick-up item upon the start of your next cycle.
I’ve played and died a LOT but it’s a lot of fun. The fun for me comes from each run where I feel like I’m doing a little better, learn a little bit more, and progress a little further. There’s no leveling up or experience points or anything like that. The closest thing might be gaining proficiency in a weapon the more times you kill an alien monster. But, like most other things, any proficiency gained is lost upon death.
Aside from the actual game play, for me Returnal exemplifies the power of the PS5. It runs at 4k 60fps with no loading screens. Everything feels buttery smooth and screens and levels load instantly. So many games that were upgraded to a PS5 version offered a performance setting OR a fidelity setting. Why not both at once? The PS5 version of Spider-Man offered a “Performance RT” setting that was the best of both worlds but there were still some sacrifices made to get there. Maybe because those were PS4 games that were more or less ported to a PS5, but Returnal makes no such compromises. I have to assume it’s because it was natively coded for the console. I mean, I haven’t done a technical analysis but this is what it feels like to me. All that and the PS5 doesn’t sound like a jet engine that’s about to take off like my old PS4 Pro did with some games. Top to bottom, Returnal is truly a great experience.
Runner-Up: Rocket League
I started playing this only ’cause one of my boys is super into it. Playing soccer with Hot Wheels sounds weird but is pretty damn fun. I’ve more or less retired from Splatoon 2 (until Splatoon 3 comes out) and Rocket League has filled that goto quick-fix game vacancy it left behind. And since I picked Splatoon 2 as my Game of the Year for 2017 partially because of the number of hours I’ve put in to it, I have to be fair and give Rocket League a nod in this post because I play it almost every day. I’m not very good but every once in a blue moon, I’ll make a play like this and feel like a pro, if even for just a moment:
Pretty damn fun.
Board Games?
Yeah, I don’t have much to contribute for this genre. I received a couple of Kickstarters that I backed, but I haven’t played any of them. Sadly, some are still unopened in their shipping box.
Eric’s Picks
This is always my favorite post to write each year, because honestly I forget about most of the games I’ve played.
This year was pretty big for me, because I got a PS5 (thanks to Ace’s quick fingers). This opened up a whole new world of gaming, including Demon’s Souls, a new / old Souls game for me to enjoy. While a majority of the games I played this year were on PC, the games I got on my PS5, I greatly enjoyed. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ll break down my favorites of the year below. Keep in mind: these are my favorite that I played this year, not necessarily games from 2021.
Slay the Spire
This one came out in…2017. So I’m a bit late to the party, but thanks to Xbox Game Pass Streaming, I was able to experience this game with touch controls from the comfort of my bed while watching documentaries. Slay the Spire is the perfect tune-out game. It demands enough attention to not be boring, but the game is set to your pace. Want to take things slow? Blast through it? Take a five minute break mid-battle? Slay the Spire doesn’t care.
It’s the first deck building game I’ve ever played, and wow, I am now a huge fan of the genre. The amount of different builds and skills you can focus within each character is truly astounding. For instance, take my favorite character: The Silent. You could focus a poison-heavy build, slowly killing enemies while building up a tanky defense to outlast them. Or a throwing knife build, where you can not only boost the power of cheap throwing knife cards, but also really up the amount you get, so you can take down bosses in one or two turns. Or put everything on the power of discarding and drawing cards, so you can select the specific cards you want each turn. There’s so many variations that come with including just one or two new cards. Add in relics that permanently boost your abilities, or potions that give you temporary abilities, and ways to manipulate all of those, and you’re in for a good time.
Another note: this game is tough. It took me a long time to beat it, even longer to beat it with every character. It’s a standard roguelike, so if you’re not into that gameplay loop, well, you might not like deck building games at all. It can also be kinda daunting to dip into if you’re looking to relax. While I’d say the game is relaxing, it can still be pretty stressful sometimes, and usually requires a fair bit of thinking.
Dominion
Keeping with the deck building theme is Dominion. Dominion is actually a card game, but luckily for humanity, it has a free-to-play digital version both on Steam and on browser. Let me say first and foremost: do not play this game physically. There is so much shuffling and so many rules that without automation, you’re in for a bad time.
Anyway, with that out of the way, let me tell you how Dominion blows Slay the Spire out of the water.
First of all, you’re playing the game against another human opponent, which adds a bunch of death. Your strategy will change because of that. While your goal is simply to have more points than your opponent, there are so many ways to do that, and it can change as you watch their move and slowly build a mental image of their deck.
Second, every single game is different (as long as you have all the expansions, and you must have the expansions). With only ten action cards each game, the small variations that arise from the pairing of different cards can completely change everything. I think I read a stat somewhere that if you started a new game of Dominion every minute, it would take around 63 million years to see every single possible match of 10 cards.
Third, there’s no right way to play the game. Dominion simply gives you ten cards and says “well, whatcha got?” Do you want to go with a really tight deck with cards that build your currency? Or pull off ludacrious combos until you have 15 different cards in play each turn? Dominion forces you to be creative, and unlike Slay the Spire, games are usually so quick that even if a strategy doesn’t work, it won’t be long until you have a fresh start, and that strategy is completely irrelevant. It’s impossible to go into this game with strategies, because every game is different. You just have to know how to chain together what you’re given well enough to win.
I could go on and on, but if you like deck building games, give it a try. It’s free. And then do what I did and spent $150 on the expansion packs. And never regret a thing.
Bowser’s Fury
The only bad thing I can say about Bowser’s Fury is that I keep forgetting it’s my game of the year. It’s not a very long game. It took me around 5 hours to 100% it, so maybe that’s why. I’d call it DLC for Super Mario 3D World if it wasn’t so very different, and wasn’t so much better.
Bowser’s Fury is much more of a fusion of Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario Odyssey than a pure successor to either. While the moveset, powerups, and enemies are all taken from 3D World, the gameplay loop of grabbing Cat Shines after completing a series of platforming challenges comes right out of Odyssey.
And, of course, Bowser’s Fury bring two new, important things to the table. First, everything is in one level. There’s no level select, no flagpoles, nothing to separate the various platforming challenges from each other aside from literal geographic separation. What you get, especially towards the end of the game, is a masterful blending of using the levels as a highway to move from one place to another. Cat Shines are hidden all over the place, sometimes behind rock pillars, or high up in the sky, or behind some specific blocks. So the stages are recontextualized depending on the challenge you’re seeking.
The stages also brilliantly change whenever you leave them. Each stage has 5 different “levels”, usually focused on a central mechanic: flipping platforms, the propellor cap, the ice skate. And after you beat a stage and walk off to do something else, it will seamlessly transition into another challenge. If I can say one bad thing about Odyssey, which remains my favorite Mario game to this day, sometimes you can be walking around too much, looking for a moon without really knowing where you’re going. That problem is gone in Bowser’s Fury. It is always obvious where you need to go, you just need to get there.
Bowser’s Fury also adds, well, Bowser. And his fury. The entire game orbits Bowser, who has transformed into this kaiju-like beast. Most of the game, Bowser is slumbering in the center of the map, but every few minutes he will wake up and the entire game will change.
He breathes fire, create new platforms to make some challenges easier, and can blow up special “Bowser Blocks” to reveal Cat Shines. Again, it’s another recontextualization of the stages. Because the only way to get Bowser back to sleep (aside from beating him up, but we’ll get to that), is by collecting a Cat Shine. So it’s generally in your best interest, unless you like getting lit on fire, to grab one as quickly as you can. If you don’t grab a Cat Shine, Bowser will eventually go back to sleep, which I’ll admit isn’t my favorite design choice. Especially in the late game, when you need him to blow up a series of Bowser Blocks in a row. It can be a bit frustrating to wait on him, but it’s a small nitpick.
Another form of recontextualizing (my new favorite word, apparently), comes with the BIG BELL. I don’t know if that’s the official term, but it’s what I call it. After you’ve collected a few Cat Shines, you’ll unlock a giant bell that will turn you into a giant Kaiju. Then, you deck it out with Bowser on the map. The stages now become obstacles, to stop Bowser’s fire or his rolling attack. It’s brilliant, and, unlike previous Mario games with a big Mario Bros. (looking at you, Mario and Luigi: Dream Team), it’s actually genuinely fun.
Fun is a great word to describe this game. The momentum of moving from one place to the next is so good, and it never stops. I felt a dopamine rush throughout the entire game, until the credits rolled at the end. While, yes, this game is short, it makes me extremely excited for the future of Mario games. The lesson learned in Bowser’s Fury will surely be used in the next Mario game, and I can’t wait to see what we get.
Nick’s Picks
Yeah, so, Eric asked me about this a few weeks ago, and I thought long and hard about this. Not about what my favorite game of 2021 was, but about what new video games I actually played in 2021. So here’s the complete list of video games that were released in 2021 that I played this year:
Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Call of Duty: Vanguard
Valheim
Forza Horizon 5*
I’ve played exactly 14 minutes of Forza Horizon 5 thus far – short review, it’s a Forza game. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is a re-release of a game trilogy I’ve played dozens of times – your opinion of Mass Effect is set, and I’m not going to give any more credit to “Bioware Magic” (i.e, Crunch). CoD is a guilty pleasure from a company that deserves to die in a fire and I seriously hate that I enjoy the fundamental gameplay loop of so much. I’m not going to recognize them with anything because Activision|Blizzard is a gross company that the world would probably be better off without and Bobby Kotick is a billionaire, and the world would certainly be better off without all billionaires. All of them.
Valheim
That leaves Valheim as the Video Game that I spent a decent chunk of time with… it’s a survival sandbox builder game that’s got some inspiration from Minecraft in it. It’s an odd game for me to like in a way, as I don’t like Minecraft all that much (though I need to get over that, since it’s my daughters absolute favorite game), and I’m not big into survival games. That being said, it’s a builder, and it scratched an itch that the long-dead EverQuest Landmark did, and it can be modded and allows for private servers.
Plus, it’s an indie title, and the developer has a “no crunch” policy, and despite hitting the jackpot with their title (five million sales on Steam after it’s launch – it’s a PC-only title), they haven’t turned it into a microtransaction-laden monster title. They deserve support and success.
Warhammer 40k
That’s not to say I didn’t spend a lot of time this year not gaming… it’s just that most of my time gaming wasn’t spent in front of a computer. I mean, I did plenty of that, just playing the same old stuff I always do. Instead, I spent a lot of time at my local friendly game store instead, pushing little plastic models around in big pretend battles.
This is most of my Crusade Army right now, and it’s been going strong for awhile
We kicked off a Crusade league here, which is a new way to play with 9th edition, and has quickly spread out to the other games in the form of “Narrative” play. Basically, instead of straight-up competitive play, you’re doing more of a story-based, game-to-game system that’s about building up over time. I opted to start with my Blood Angels force, and kept working on them over the course of the year.
My Blood Angels aren’t the strongest army in the game. Certainly not the worst… that’s reserved for my second army, Craftworlds Eldar (who volley for that title with the Tau), but they’re an early-edition Codex that lacks a lot of synergy with the rules. Power Creep has been a big thing this edition, and there has been some real balance issues with books released after the initial batch. Worse, the actual rules for the Blood Angels, while flavorful, don’t really match the lore and what the army is supposedly good at.
In theory, we’re a close-combat army that likes jet packs. We do have some troops that can do both of those things, but there are generic Space Marine troops that do it better than them, and there are other armies that do it better than them as well. Other armies have better rules than us to do those things as well, and our rules don’t really support it.
It’s frustrating that this is probably the best face I’ve ever painted, on a unit I may never field…
Still, it was a fun way to meet a lot of new people, enjoy playing games masked, and for a brief time pre-Delta and Omicron, unmasked, amongst mostly-vaxxed players (I mean, you got some idiots in every group), and I’ve found a good community of players in Warhammer for the first time in years. That’s the big thing for games like this… the community makes it far more than the game does, and the reason why I’d quit playing it in the past was because the community where I’d lived was just so bad.
It’s not all perfect, though… Games Workshop, as a company, has certainly seen their share of highs and lows. They continue to do rather epic levels of shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to communication and marketing. The debacle around Cursed City is still a master class on everything not to do… they just recently announced that the game is coming back without any sort of explanation as to why they scrubbed it from their site and went radio silent. No date as to when, but it will be getting expansions, so… yay, I guess?
More recently, an issue of their magazine that was supposed to show up before Christmas has just… vanished. It was supposed to have new rules for a couple of different armies in Age of Sigmar (the fantasy game), as well as some other stuff… and just nothing. They continue to have issues with product delays and the pipeline, and they’re just drip-feeding out information. Prices have gone up, and product has been increasingly hard to find, both at local game stores and directly from GW. Their ability to fulfill orders laughable most of the time, with stuff often taking weeks or months to show up.
I had to 3D print one small part in here, because I can’t order them from GW directly. They’ve been out of stock for ages…
That being said, they’re still the wargames that I find most fun to play. There are plenty of competitors out there, but none of them scratch that same itch. Legion has a decent enough following around here, but I haven’t gotten into it and don’t have the time to paint it. Fallout Wasteland Warfare, while fun, has no community to speak of in this area (or anywhere so far as I know – cool looking minis, but it hasn’t ever taken off). I’m not really interested in the rank-and-flank style games like Conquest.
I have started to get more into the smaller games from GW, though, and those likely will be what I talk about next year. Things like Necromunda, which I last played back in the late 90s, Kill Team, which saw a new edition come out this year. I’m going to start dipping my toes into Age of Sigmar, because I always want a bit more fantasy, though Im likely going to avoid Warcry and the like. There’s plenty of tabletop, and painting and building has been my jam as of late.
It hasn’t been just my Blood Angels… my Craftworlds army has been out there and dying a lot. Like thia scene, right before my Fire Prism got wrecked
I’ve also done some D&D, though that’s also been a bit more scattered as the pandemic year has moved it all online and my group has sort of scattered to the wind as people have moved around in the 24th month of 2020. Hopefully I’ll get some of that going again as we go into 2020 Part III, but I’m also taking a long and hard look at my shelves full of RPG books, and realizing that most of these books and systems are going unread and unused, and probably need to be cut as well.
I wrote about my adventures in doing too many things earlier this year, dealing with anxiety and mental health, and just the world being a general tire fire. All of that is still true. I’ve continued down that path, as it’s a journey, not a goal. I’ve managed to get rid of some piles of plastic, gotten different piles of plastic, and generally maintained. I did find someone to buy my copy of Gloomhaven, though somehow my board game collection still managed to grow as old Kickstarter pledges started to show up (as did Heroquest, which just took up Gloomhaven’s space in the the closet). So, kind of a wash.
Still, though, it was really a Warhammer year for me. Who knows, maybe Space Marine II will come out in 2022 (though it has no date announced, so who knows)… and it can scratch both my Warhammer and video game itches. The first game was one of the few 40k games that I’ve ever actually enjoyed, and even though it was janky and somewhat one-note, it was fun and underrated.
