Back in January I decided to set myself the goal of assembling and painting 2,500 pts. of White Scar space marines for Warhammer 40k. I’m nowhere close to that at the moment but yesterday I managed to field a 100 Power Points force of assembled models for my first game of 8th Edition and that came to 2,003 pts. Frankly it was a relief to see that I have gotten that far, and many of the models I used were actually over 50% painted (nearly all painted in terms of larger vehicles.) I’m feeling pretty confident that I’ll be able to get the rest finished by the end of the year.
In terms of the battle, I came away with a lucky win. My opponent forgot to field an entire unit of chaos space marines which left me with a nearly 500 pts. advantage and I was able to sweep through most of what he had. That and I had some pretty lucky rolls when it came to Overwatch and 6+ saves. I’ll take the victory though as it was an introductory game for me and I’d no idea what any of my stuff did. Also, in keeping with White Scar fluff, I chose an enemy character as my quarry and managed to successfully eliminate him with my three Land Speeders. For the Emperor and the Khan!
After months of going back and forth on getting one, my brand spanking new Pokémon GO Plus arrived in the mail this morning! I had partly given up playing the game over the last few weeks because I was getting sick of constantly charging my phone battery. With the new gym upgrades (check out my Geek Ireland article here) I’m particularly eager to get back into the wild and get levelling again. Of course I ensured that I picked up a second for my girlfriend so I wouldn’t get in trouble for lording it over her.
On an oddly disappointing note the parcel arrived three days earlier than Amazon.co.uk advised that it would so I hadn’t charged my phone enough to get some good use out of it on the way home from work. I am hoping to get out and about with it later before people call around for board games later.
It’s been a wonderful few days on the board game front as I’ve been able to pick up a few pieces that I’ve been wanting for a while and had something I’d backed on Kickstarter turn up unexpectedly. On a housekeeping note I finally got around to picking up the Big Geeky Box for Smash Up! A few months back I filled out the available space in the core box and had picked up the What Were We Thinking? expansion so it was about time I picked up more storage. The only disappointing thing about the box is that it still leaves you needing to find a way of keeping the VP tokens together, but I already have some little storage pots that should do the trick. Looking forward to getting this back on the table over the next few weeks.
Secondly, thanks to some extra funds I got for my birthday, I bit the bullet and spent the €130 needed to get Blood Rage along with its Fifth Player Expansion and Mystics of Midgard expansion. I really enjoy the game but I didn’t want to just pick up the core game alone. We had a few friends over to continue our Pandemic Legacy Season One campaign last night (we lost on outbreaks) and I decided to take out Blood Rage afterwards. Thankfully, after months of me gushing about the game, everyone enjoyed it though we ran out of time before playing the Third Age. Now that everyone knows how the game plays though, they’re really looking forward to giving it a more informed play through.
Finally, I got a call from my dad yesterday to say that a packet was waiting for me at the local post centre. I still get my Kickstarter rewards sent to my parents house because their mortgage is paid off and there’s less chance of them moving. When I got to the post centre it turned out that the packet (as it was marked on the delivery notice) was actually a large box containing Nova Aetas along with its first expansion and a few extra models. I only got an email from the shipping company last week to say I could expect it in 4-6 weeks so it was a huge surprise that it arrived. Unfortunately a few models didn’t survive shipping but a drop of glue and most of them are now ready to hit the table. I can’t wait to give this one a try.
So, the new Warhammer 40k Dark Imperium set came out on Saturday and I’ve been working away assembling the Primaris Marines models from the box. I’ve rather stupidly decided to try a different colour scheme for the models and it’s proving more annoying than I expected. In the past my White Scars have been based white with a few extra layers of white added before adding the red detailing. This time however, I began with a black base (there’s your problem) before layering Celestra Grey and Mephiston Red (detail) and then shading with Nuln Oil. Next I layered Ulthuan Grey before finishing off with White Scars White. Thankfully there are only a handful of models in this box to do and I have some pictured up when I’m done.
Published by Surf Star Media, The Final Book: Gods is S.W. Hammond’s first foray into an enticing world of gods and mortals. Spanning four millennia of mortal interaction with the divine, the story follows a path that will be both familiar to Assassin’s Creed fans and at the same time something all its own. For centuries members of the Greek pantheon have found themselves stranded on Earth after a childish argument between sisters causes an upheaval among the Gods. As a result of one brash action, mankind is thrust into an age of unprecedented corruption and greed of which the Gods are powerless to circumvent. Flash forward to the late 1960’s and Zeus is reaching the culmination of his work on Earth; Project Genesis. Using technical knowledge gained over the centuries, he has constructed a machine that can create a memory link between a person in the present and a past life. Now all he needs is the right person for the job, and in USAF pilot Martin Akadian he believes he has found him. But even the great King of the Gods is not infallible and what follows is an epic tale of loss and redemption that could spell the end for mankind.
The Final Book: Gods is a story told in three distinct parts, the earliest set 4,000 years ago around Mesopotamia and the latest in modern-day America. Hammond does a great job of interweaving these different stories in a manner that both makes sense and doesn’t compromise the narrative. The book easily glides between each era, unfolding the story in a manner that makes it easy to read and understand. Unfortunately it is this fluidity of storytelling that really makes the court document pieces stand out. They feel completely out-of-place, as they are written in a style entirely at odds with the rest of the book, though their importance to the overall story cannot be discounted. Thankfully the rest of the novel is written to a high standard, and these documents are short enough that they shouldn’t cause the reader to put the book down indefinitely.
A further minor issue I had with the book was the fact that all the characters were practically perfect; Each is introduced with reference to their beauty or intelligence. Of course each of the characters is supposed to be one of the ancient Gods, so some of that might be forgiven but it certainly stood out as something that grated throughout the book. It seemed the female characters defining trait was their beauty while the males frequently, especially Zeus/William, discussed philosophy with ease. Beyond this however, each character stayed true to the mythology upon which they were based: Hera was vengeful, Zeus was frequently unfaithful, but The Final Book: Gods does take the interesting route of showing them trying to overcome their past indiscretions. In their personas of William and Pom, Zeus and Hera appear more like a loving couple than they were in the old myths, while Andi and Chloe seem to have put the incident that accidentally caused Christianity behind them.
At its heart, The Final Book: Gods takes a very interesting view of religious development and as a result has a strong message to put forward. In a similar manner to Becky Chambers’ A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet the book takes a negative view of organised religion. It is perhaps for this reason that the publisher and author describe the book as “a controversial last chapter of humanity.” Should readers be able to get beyond this ‘controversial’ theme they will find an extremely well written tome that certainly deserves a place on any bookshelf. What’s more, S.W. Hammond has revealed that ‘Gods’ is intended as the first part in a trilogy of The Final Book titles, so there’s plenty more to look forward to in the future.
So, last night I had the opportunity to try out the FATE Role Play system with a few friends, and I must admit I was quite impressed. For once I wasn’t the GM but I would definitely say it suits my style of game management. I believe that the narrative is the best part of a campaign, weaving a story that brings the characters together without getting bogged down in mechanics. FATE delivers that in spades and I can see how it could be used to play any number of scenarios be it fantasy, science fiction or, as we played last night, post-apocalyptic western.
The system really opens up the range of characters that can be played too. Last night we were all boring an played human characters but we had had a ‘Too Old for this S***’ army vet., a crew-protecting bounty hunter, an alcoholic gambler and my fatalistic every man. Thanks to the lack of mechanics we were able to really get into the minds of our characters and how each came to be part of our eccentric little group. Also, I got to blow a mech’s leg off with a stick of dynamite which was pretty cool. I can definitely see myself trying to run something with FATE in the future.
So, things definitely didn’t go to plan on the hobby front yesterday. I had planned to put some more work in on my Ork Kill Team and polish of All the Birds in the Skyfor my Science Fiction & Fantasy book club, but I got held back at work for a few hours so my spare time was severely limited. On the plus side, my second order of the week from Games Workshop arrived, including some shades that I needed for the Orks so I was able to get a little work done. As it stands I’ve gotten all the skin of my Leader and Specialist done along with most of the metal, so I’m pretty happy with the progress there. In fact I’m writing this post while waiting for the Nuln Oil shade to dry.
On the book club front (yes I left reading the book until the last moment) they’ve changed how we’re picking the next read. Instead of letting each member put forward a book to a general vote, we were simply given the choice of two books to choose from. Dark Edenby Chris Beckett won out in a close decision with Station Eleven. I can’t say I was overly enthused to read either book, but then that’s why I joined the club in the first place, to read things I otherwise wouldn’t pick up. In other book related news I should finish off All the Birds in the Sky soon, and maybe even United States of Japan which I had put down in order to get the club book read. Then it’s on to The Underground Railroad for my other book club (meets next Thursday) and then hopefully back-to-backing This Savage Song and Our Dark Duet.
