Tag: Munchkin

Edge of Empire

If you know me well, then you know I have an interest in podcasting, a couple of years ago, I bought a new mixer, microphones and headphones and I dabbled a little, but didn’t really have much in the way of focus and it kinda fell by the wayside and I didn’t really do much with it as a result.

I had often thought about Podcasting about the Horus Heresy and the scene in the North East, but couldn’t motivate myself, and it took Graham to say, that he wanted to do a podcast for me to say, yeah I actually want to do this.So we have currently got a name for it, Edge of Empire, because here in the North East we are at the edge of what was the Roman Empire, and the Imperium is kinda Roman themed, plus it was just too good a name to pass up, so thanks to Martin for suggesting It.

So I have stormed ahead and registered the domain and started work on a website, registered us on the main social media sites, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, set up the Soundcloud account and set back up properly my equipment.

Now we just have to get in and do it, I have Lindsay going to design us a temporary logo, cause mine is rubbish, and we can use that until we can strong arm someone to design is a better one.

Me and Graham both have plans to build new armies around the new Inferno book, him Thousand Sons, me Space Wolves so that’s going to be an interesting place to start with, and we plan to generally talk about the hobby here in the North East, and it’s an exciting time, what with the Weekender coming up and the new Battle Bunker opening in Sunderland. And with so many other great podcasts out there influencing us, like Sons of Heresy, North Heresy, Geno Five Two, The Imperial Truth etc, we just hope we can do a good job.

Anyway suggestions on how to do this are welcome, both me and Graham have no real idea of what we are doing so if you can offer any advice it’s always welcome. 

What I am Modelling

It’s all about scenery still, I have painted up two Wall of Martyrs Imperial Defence Lines and a Wall of Martyrs Imperial Defence Emplacement, I am now halfway though it all and although I love the detail on them, they are a pain in the arse to paint up so many.

I have also built a Wall of Martyrs Firestorm Redoubt, which is a horrible kit to build, two Munitorum Armoured Containers, a Basilica Administratum and a Manufactorum. I think I am going to get the rest of the scenery built tomorrow so I can try and prime it after my driving lesson on Monday and then get on with painting it all.

What I am Reading

I finished Master of Mankind and have to say it’s an absolute masterpiece.

I was struggling to sleep the other night and so I picked up my Kobo to read a single chapter and I couldn’t put it down, the last third of the book is simply that good.

I really think it’s good enough for me to nominate for a Hugo, I doubt it would win over many other voters as they tend to look down quite a bit in Black Library books, but the quality of writing is simply amazing, and certainly up there with the best of them.

Honestly, Aaron Dembski-Bowden if he wrote sci-fi that wasn’t Warhammer related, would win a Hugo award, and frankly I am not sure how Black Library are going to keep hold of him for too much longer.

Now that I am fully up to date with the Heresy, I am thinking of reading the Beast Arises series, Harry tells me it’s really good.

What I am Playing

Played noting since I last blogged, have been too busy with painting, but I did manage to get a game of Blood Bowl 2 in on the Xbox One, struggling to get past the Wood Elves. 

What I am Backing

I am a big Munchkin fan, I know it’s not the most sophisticated game, but I enjoy it. So it natural that I would be backing Munchkin Shakespeare, a project which arose out of a panel on a JoCo Cruise, and seeing as it’s a crowd sourced project, it kinda makes sense to crowd fund it.

Well honestly I am not a big fan of established companies going to Kickstarter to launch a new game without good reason. And Steve Jackson Games is a pretty big company so I am conflicted about this, but they aren’t a daft company so I am sure they would have done research before deciding to take this to Kickstarter, and in fairness, it’s a product that I can distributers being a bit wary of.
Regardless, I am sure the team will produce a game that will amuses and entertain us. I am backing at the $60 I Want it All! tier which includes the base game, which currently consists of 147 cards and a custom d6, a Kickstarter exclusive expansion which has in it 37 cards, 16 dungeons, a bookmark, Kill-o-Meter, a journal, a coin and some blank cards, and all the add ons unlocked by the project, which so far include a rigged set of demo cards, a pack of 6 d6s with 4 cards and a guest artist Kill-o-Meter with 4 cards.
The project stand at $117kish as I write this and is well on its way to unlocking its next two stretch goals, the $130 one being some themed Flower pawns.

So if you are a fan of Shakespeare and Munchkin I highly recommend you go back this project.

What I am Spending

Seeing as I spent all my money at the store birthday party, absolutely noting, although I did pick up the Dwarves Blood Bowl team that I had ordered at the birthday party on Saturday.

I had hoped they would have gotten some stick, but none was sent to the store strangely, and I did spend some time checking out more scenery, but I am not sure I want to add anymore to the to do list!

A Relaxing Trip

To help celebrate my birthday, myself, Lindsay and Megan booked up a nice weekend away at a lodge in Otterburn. My plan had been to chill out and play games all weekend, the girls proffered the idea of visiting some places.

So Friday morning we feed and watered the animals and set off to spend a few hours in Rothbury a picturesque little town to the north northwest of Newcastle, where we had a nice little walk along the old fashioned ships and finally having some lunch in a little cafe. After this we set off to Otterburn and our lovely little lodge for the weekend.

And it was a really nice lodge, nicely decorated with comfortable furniture and best of all a hot tub! We had pizza that night and played Joking Hazard a game I backed on Kickstarter from the team behind the Cyanide and Happiness comic and it was a pretty good little party game.

The next day we drove up to Alnwick where we wandered round the market and Megan bought some mead from the Lindisfarne Mead shop. We had a nice dinner at the Dirty Bottles smokehouse and then went home via Barter Books, who to my dismay did not have an RPG section! That evening we had hot dogs and played a game of Munchkin Gloom.

The Sunday was dedicated entirely to games, starting out with with a nice game of Firefly Fluxx, after a lovely fried breakfast lovely prepared by Lindsay and Megan. Then we cracked open our copy of Tokaido Collectors Edition, another game we Kickstarted, the first one that we as a household Kickstarted together. We got it back in June, but it was only completed recently when we got the missing parts we needed. That was a fun game, which I won, but only because I decided to play as the game designer Antoine who wins all ties!

Then we moved onto Munchkin: The Nightmare before Christmas, a game which we had to import from America because USAoploy don’t publish their games in the U.K., but we enjoyed this version of the classic, I would have won, but Lindsay and Megan ganged up on me, wasting all the cards they had to mess with other players which then allowed Megan to win because there was noting Lindsay could do to help me stop her.

After lunch, Megan wasn’t feeling too well so she sat and watched some David Attenborough whilst me and Lindsay played Thunderbirds with the Tracey Island expansion, which is one of my favourite games. We managed to win that one, but it was close, another couple of turns and we would have lost because of of the missions was going to be so difficult to achieve.

Finally before bed we played a few rounds of Love Letter, which is always a favourite, me and Lindsay did want to play Carcassonne Star Wars Edition, but Lindsay wasn’t taking in the rules so we ended up not playing, which was a shame, I would have liked to have played more games that day, but the girls had a pace they wanted to play at. But we did have plenty of dips in the hot tub though!

Megan was sadly quite sick through the night, so we ended up leaving a little earlier than planned on the Monday to get her home quicker so she could recover for her trip to her Nana’s down in Oxfordshire.

On Tuesday I was due to play a 2500 point game of 40k but annoyingly the car decided to break down on the way to club, we did manage to get the car moving again before the RAC dude came out, and he found a fault on the booster pressure sensor, but the garage aren’t too worried about it, but we are taking him in next week to get looked over anyway, hopefully it’s just a one off, one in a million fault that won’t reoccur. 

What I am Modelling

Got my Millitarium Tempestus Kill Team ready to go. I went with the Kapic Eagles colour scheme because I actually quite like it and it’s easy to do following Duncan’s painting guide. I am seriously thinking of entering it into the Warhammer 40,000 Open Day Kill Team Tournament. I figure it will keep my busy, and not spending money, for much of the day, and I might actually stand a chance as not many players use the Millitarium Tempestus and thus they have a little bit of an unknown factor to them.

My list consists of the following

+ Troops (95pts) +

Millitarium Tempestus Scions (95pts) [2x Tempestus Scion (24pts), Tempestus Scion w/ Hot-shot Volley Gun (22pts), Tempestus Scion w/ Plasma Gun (27pts)]····Tempestor (22pts) [Bolt Pistol, Close Combat Weapon]

+ Fast Attack (100pts) +

Taurox Prime (100pts) [Taurox Missile Launcher (20pts), Twin-linked Autocannon]

The Scion with the Hotshot Volley Gun gets Relentless as an Indomitable Specialist, the Scion with the Plasma Gun is a Guerrilla Specialist and takes Preferred Enemy and one Scion with a Hot Shot Lasgun gets Sniper as a Weapons Specialist.

Hopefully this small elite team in the comfort of a Taurox Prime will manage to do some damage.

I have also started to paint up a Blood Angels Kill Team as well, but I will talk more about them next time.

What I am Reading

I have finished Ahriman Sorcerer, which was quite good, I liked how the story built up to the battle, but I was disappointed with the deaths of the characters who has supported Ahriman in the first book, it felt like they got very little in terms of appearances before they were summarily gotten rid of.

I have also been listening to some of the short stories around the Drop Site Massacre as I have been Modelling, stories you forget about like Strike and Fade, Veritas Ferrum and The Phoenician, and I am currently listening to the Crimson Fist, which I enjoy as Alexis Pollux is one of my favourite characters.

What I am Playing

A lot more than I have been of late, other than my trip to the lodge this is what we played.

Last Saturday night, me, Lindsay and Megan played a game of Bohnanza, a really cool game by Uwe Rosenberg, which is an old favourite of ours. It’s all about planting, selling and trading beans to make money, trusts me it’s better than it sounds. As usual Megan dominated the game, winning with 40 coins to my 24 and Lindsays 22.

The next Sunday, whilst Megan was at her sisters with her parents, me and Lindsay took a trip to Consett Tabletop Gaming Society, which meets on every second Sunday of the month. There we played a game of Ticket to Ride on the United Kingdom map, and I got bested very convincingly by Lindsay.

Then we cracked out Secret Hitler and we had 8 cracking games of this incredible hidden roles game. In the first 4 games I had the same Liberal card for all of them which cracked me up so much at the beginning of game 4 we had to redeal the role envelopes.

As when playing with Drew’s print and play set, I had an amazing time, it really is a game that gets your pulse racing. In one game we had passed 5 Facist laws and 4 Liberal laws and failed to elect a government 3 times, so we had to pass the first law from the top of the deck, unbelievably and statistically unlikely, it was a Liberal law wining the game for the good guys, but that game really did have my heart pounding.

The game went down very well with the Consett guys and I can certainly see them buying a copy for their collection.

What I am Backing

At the moment I am backing another project by my old friend, Sliced Quarterly. The stories in t you can read online so you get to try before you buy and they really are some very interesting stories and ways of telling these stories.

What I am Spending 

A lot less this week, simply because I have put money into Christmas presents, like an awesome Lego train set for one of the bairns. I did pick up another set of Lascannons to go with my Blood Angels Devastator Squad that Lindsay bought me for my birthday, so I can equip the whole squad with Lascannons and have them sit back and fire off laser death shots!

I also picked up as a birthday treat to myself a box of Blood Angels Assault Terminators, these guys are going to be equipped with Thunderhammers and Storm Shields and form part of my Archangels Orbital Intervention Force, I have a squad of standard Terminators already, so I am going to add another squad of Assault Terminators but give the second squad Lightning Claws. 

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén