And Believe me I am Still Alive!

Hello there dear readers! As things are wont to do my posting schedule and planned articles went out the window and I really haven't had the energy to write like a good little blogger. It's partly because of the proto-gamer of course, but also my enthusiasm for writing about new Infinity releases has lessened and meaning to keep to that schedule has meant that I haven't posted about other stuff I've been doing. It's not that I don't enjoy writing about Infinity news, but I feel that with my limited time I want to focus on stuff that is a bit more personal and unique.

So don't expect as much talk about the latest Infinity releases, but instead bask in the glory of my latest gaming achievements! Hopefully there will be more, but perhaps shorter, posts of what I've been up to lately as well as some reviews here and there. Business as usual. Kind of.

We didn't get very far...

To recap the past month... there's been some board gaming. We gave Legendary Encounters: Alien to my friend Anders and I've played a couple of games - still not won yet though. It's easy to grasp and quick-ish with a greath theme that doesn't quite click from a mechanical standpoint but still comes through enough to make it all very enjoyable.

EU won handily in this game as their economy engine simply crushed me and Anders.

I pulled out MERCS: Conflict again and I used some Fudge dice as proxy resource dice to be able to play more than two players. I've enjoyed the two player games, but three players brought an entirely new dimension to the game and it made me regret that I didn't spring for extra during the kickstarter! Also, I really like special dice... I think I need Roll for the Galaxy in my life.

Troyes about mid-game. You see all my VP-makers? All two of them? Yeah... that's why I didn't win.

Troyes made another appearance however I failed to really make a plan come together and ended up last. I was going to build lots on the cathedral, as that was my VP card, but in a surprise move it seemed like everyone had the same idea and I actually got less built than most of the other players. Lots of fun and brow furrowing though!

The keen-eyed among you might spot a painted Spriggan. I'll put up some decent pictures soon. Unfortunately I haven't got aound to painting the orcs yet though - these were kindly lent to me by Anna to supplement my game as the Razorfiend turned up.

With the release of Act I of Rise of the Revenant for MYTH that hit the table as well with four heroes against the undead hordes. The first tile was pretty brutal as we rolled an Agent as the first spawn and as we played really suboptimally for a few cycles. By the time we got to the third tile we had gotten our act together and made short work of the Revenant's cronies. At the very end our overly eager Soldier made the Razorfiend mini-boss spawn and all our actions cost double, which proved a little hectic! But clever play saw us through and we're now eagerly awaiting the next act.

Ryan Laukat - need more of his games!

There was also some Eight Minute Empire: Legends played and I like it better each time. It's very small and minimalistic but packs a lot of good decisionmaking in its 20~30 minute play time. Love it!

Jinteki doing what they do best! :D

Finally (and I think this will have the greatest repercussions) I managed to get Netrunner to the table, after over a year of no plays at all! And it's just... so good! I think I had forgotten or repressed how suberp a game it is, but I had so much fun just playing to games against my buddy Claes. First as a denial-y Jinteki: Replicating Perfection, which frustrated Claes no end, and then with a slightly wonky and very combo-y Chaos Theory deck. I pulled off two wins but that wasn't really important - simply playing the game is just... fun!

Chaos Theory had a slow start but once she started to Test Run/Scavenge her breaker suit together it was all gravy... 

Also the theme is great. The Android universe (first created by Kevin Wilson) is of course an amalgamation of lots of different cyberpunk and scifi themes and ideas, but it's been put together in a way that I think makes it far superior to other FFG settings like Twilight Imperium and Terrinoth. It has also been allowed to grow and evolve in different ways and I'm actually pretty excited to see what they could be doing with it in the future.

In fact I'm so excited that I've snagged myself a copy Infiltration, since it's bound to disappear fairly soon, and I'm also on the lookout for the original Android board game and the Android novels FFG released a few years back. Yes, I long to be steeped in Android from head to toe! Some of you might be surprised to hear that I'm looking to reacquiring Android as I gave it the proverbial last chance back in 2011. However, let me quote myself from that very article:

"Even though we talked about this being the last chance for Android in our group I don't actually think it was, the attractive elements are simply too many. I'm pretty sure that in a year's time from now some of us are going to thinking that maybe if we tried it just once more... then it might be really cool!"

While it ended up being more than a year (more like four) I proved myself right as I'm dying to get my hands on a copy. In fact, let me know if you want to get rid of yours (or the books!) - I need my Android fix! Hehe...

I've spent the last week catching up listening to the Run Last Click podcast. It's good stuff and quite funny to boot. I decided to listen from the beginning as I only have cards up to and including Honor and Profit and it's cool to hear their take on the cards as they came out. I also just made an account on Jinteki.net so hit me up if you want to give a newbie a solid thrashing - I'm Beepluck over there.

If it seems like I've become addicted to Netrunner I think you might not be far off! Let's see what the future holds.

Time for these guys to enslave the last of humanity!

In other news, I'll be playing my first game of Dropzone Commander this weekend, which I'm really looking forward to! The DropFLEET Commander kickstarter will be launching at the end of October and I will be all over that like a Wraparound on an Atman! Everything I've seen of it so far has managed to tick so many of my boxes. Very excited for it! Just look at that Scourge ship below...

Speaking of kickstarters, the Infinity rpg by Modiphius has another three days left and has blown through a number of stretchgoals. I'm in it for the core books+all the PDFs. Originally I was actually a little hesitant about the whole thing, but when I saw that they'd made Justin Alexander the line developer for the Infinity rpg I was onboard immediately! Check out his blog, The Alexandrian, and I'm sure you'll realize why. Finally I'll simply mention the ongoing Scythe kickstarter. It blew through more than $500,000 during the first 24 hours so don't really need much help, but anway... it looks awesome and I need to sell more stuff to try and afford backing it. :)

And with that lovely looking Scourge cruiser it's time to go. I feel fantastic and I'm still alive...