Weekly Waffle #297
3rd September 2022
I know I said last week that I may not have an update every week but week two of the return does bring a new update. But just to manage expectations I really don’t think I will have an update next week because I’m away next week for a short break. Having said the I’ve not got a great deal done this week but I have got some hobby time in and I’ve been working on some Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii Vanguard. These have been built up just as standard minis unlike the Rangers where I used the bodies from the ash waste nomads. The idea behind them is that these are the garrison troops so have a more formal appearance and are a little bit cleaner in appearance but that the two units should have a common feel. I’ve probably managed to get about eighty percent of the way through the work with the remainder being the details to finish them off before I weather them. I am thinking of using some transfers to add squad markings but I’ll see how that goes on a test piece before committing fully to the idea. Weathering is going to follow the same approach as for the Rangers with an oil wash followed by some weathering powders before everything gets a final mat varnish. I’m hoping that I can have the finished in a couple of weeks and whilst I don’t want to spoil my mojo with silly targets I think this is a reasonable goal. So let’s see how it goes.
Game night this week actually had me playing a game and not just hanging around having a chat. What’s more is that it was game I have never played before. Now before I get into the details let me give you a bit of background first because at the end of the day this is supposed to be a waffle and not just a weekly update. When it comes to new games Anna, Alan and Tom, in particular Tom, have something of an addiction of haying everything they see. Which was case here when they were at a show, I can’t remember which one, when Tom came across this and promptly get everything what was available. Then give it to Anna and Alan to paint, which is also par for the course. So what is this mystery game? It is Super Fantasy Brawl which is a table top miniature game but unlike most games you don’t use dice but instead use a card deck that is matched to the characters you are using, which I found to be a really good mechanic which works really well. The way it is supposed to work is that you pick three characters (in a two player game but it can be played with four players) with the idea being to pick characters that work well together with good synergies. For our game I just picked three models that I liked the look of for me and three for Anna with no knowledge of what they did or how they would work together, I simply followed the rule of cool. As it turned out the two sides seemed to be really balanced so that is either down to some subliminal skill on my part but is more likely the case that the designers have made a well balanced game regardless of which characters you pick, although picking characters that work well together will increase your chances of winning. In order to win you need to get five victory tokens, although that may not be the official name for them, and you get these by either achieving objectives or by knocking down one of your opponents characters. When you knock a character down it isn’t out of the game it simply goes back to a starting point and respawns back into the game. This way you are never out of the game and always have a chance to win. You can also score by achieving objectives which change each round. These are drawn at random from a deck and progress as the game moves on which means depending how long the game goes on for you can get through a few of these objectives. They also change their value in terms of victory points as the game progresses so in the first round they aren’t actually worth anything, the second round they are worth one point, in the third and fourth rounds they are worth two points before dropping back down to one point in the fifth and then they drop off the board in the sixth. First player to five points is the winner. This means that gaining an objective and knocking down a couple of characters in a round, which isn’t easy but with the right cards and a bit of planning is more that achievable can really swing a game around. The card deck mechanic is also really interesting as you never know exactly what you are going to be able to do with your characters, or even if you can use them all in a round so it keeps you on your toes and forces you to react the the cards you have in your hand at any one time, all adding to the fun in my opinion. It is certainly a game I will play again and I can see that once you start to understand the characters, and there are quite a few of them, you can start to get a lot more strategic about which ones you pick, but I do like the idea of someone else picking random characters for you. Now this random approach may me just be the lingering effects of the fact that I actually manged to win our game yesterday five to four in a game where neither myself or Anna managed to win an objective and all of our points came from knockdowns. Although I have to admit that Anna did have a very poor hand to work with in our last round and she did help me throughout the game, but a wins and win and I don’t get many of them so I’m going to claim this as the one for this year, and I’m looking forward to playing again. If you get the chance to play I would strongly recommend that you give it a go, the models are really nice, rules are nice and simple but with the card mechanic there is a lot of variety in the game and the more you start to pick and chose the characters you use the more strategic the game gets. It’s one of those goes that is really quick and easy to pick up but that you could spend a lot of time trying to master, especially if new characters are released which will mean you need to work out where they fit in with everything meaning a simple release of a couple of characters can shake the whole game up. I personally think they are onto a winner with this and hope it continues to grow. There is a link here if you want to check it out.
That’s it on the hobby front but I’ve also spent some time trying to clean up the back end of the site to make it a little more resilient. I hadn’t realised but I have over five thousand images on here and that takes its toll it things aren’t set up correctly. I’ve picked up some new plug-ins which I’m hoping will help me try and wrangle them into some sort of order which in turn will help me back things up in case of future issues. This is probably going to take some time so fingers crossed it all hangs together until I get it all cleaned up.
I’ve nothing else for this week so I’ll wrap things up here for this week. I hope you all have a great couple of weeks and I’ll be back here in a fortnight, hopefully I’ll have managed to get some hobby time in to have an update for you. Until then keep safe.
