Top 5 "New to Me" Boardgames of March 2025

 This is probably going to be a reoccurring thing if that wasn't clear.

So March saw me fall just a bit shy of the pacing I've had for the year so far. I think were still fine for the total goals at year end because there should be more gaming this summer. I played 27 plays across 22 different games. Of those, 12 were new to me not counting new expansions for games I've already played. 

Honorable Mentions

An Age Contrived

 This was played at the monthly "lets play those kickstarters" game group I've been attending. Same place we played Last Light last time. I could best describe this one as "a euro game with ameritrash sensibilities." I have this game on my wishlist but to be honest I haven't decided if I will actually pull the trigger because I haven't decided if I actually liked it. I'll republish the texts I sent to a friend that sum up the experience pretty succinctly. 

"It would be like if I told you to make a cake and instead of giving you a recipe I just told you what every individual ingredient tasted like. So you taste the raw flour and rightfully spit it out and that's the moment I tell you well, that ones there for structure not flavor. So you smash together some version of a cake based on all the cake youve eaten in your life and its bad and only then do I tell you that you needed specific quantities of each ingredient"

A bit hyperbolic but it summed up our first game well.

World Wonders (Mundo expansion)

 

Last year we played our way through the legacy game, My City with some friends of ours. In short, My City is a tile layer with tetramino shapes and requires some spacial awareness. About one or two games in my wife as well as one of our friends were over it. 2 of us loved the experience until about the final 6 games of the campaign. We all thought by the end that the game overstayed its welcome and the consensus was "I'm over this genre" 

Depsite the wifes protests, I picked up the spacial awareness tile layer World Wonders and its Mundo expansion at Origins last year. I'm glad I did. There are some neat twists to the formula in the open shared market, the "buying out of the round" that comes with purchasing wonders and the actual spatial puzzle. Many of these games work by asking you to fill the grid out more or less completely but this one doesn't. I'm also obsessed with nice Chonky Wood parts. 

This is an honorable mention because we've played the base game a few times but just added the expansion in recently.

Apiary 

Apiary makes the list because I would play it again but it didn't leave a solid first impression. Unfortunately I blame that on the starting faction I drew at random which pointed me towards a specific resource that was difficult to get and shoehorned me into thinking I needed a specifc strategy to compete. This is the most points I've lost a game by with this group probably full-stop. I'd play it again buy I did take the expansion off my wishlist.

Top 5 of March

5 - Power Vacuum

 This was a kickstarter that just delivered. Billed as a trick taker mixed with social deduction. I don't think that's quite what delivered but the game is super unique. We only got one 3 player play in and I would be very excited to play this one again. There are some twists to the formula wrapped in a nice production that make it a good fit for the shelf. There is a much larger discussion on what hidden role and social deduction does for a game but in short, adding a mechanic that allows you to reveal your hidden role early makes for its own subset of mechanical interaction that is super interesting to me.

4 - Black Forest

 

I liked this. I mostly want to talk about the resource "clock."  This is a euro game about making glass. Every time you recieve a basic resource (the resources to the right of the top facing "clock hand") you slide the token representing that resource one space clockwise. You'll notice the number tracking quantity around the center of said clock. Whenever there is an empty space to the right of the clock hand (i.e. there are no tokens in the "0" space) the clock hand must be moved over. This has the effect of increasing the resources to the left of the clock hand while simultaneously depleting all the resources to the right. This happens automatically and is mandatory and will happen mid action. You either understand what I said and it sounds neat or you didnt and this game is probably not for you.

The meat of this is wrapped around a sort of worker placement type mechanic and involves you trading the resources back and forth to have the right resources to buy what you need at that moment. My only complaint so far is that those clocks are dual layer and curled right up. I was the most into the game in our group but I don't think anyone hated it.

3 - Hands in the Sea (2nd ed)

This is A Few Acres of Snow rethemed to the Punic wars. I adore Few Acres so this was a natural fit for me. I think the changes and additions of things like the naval combat and the event deck make it different enough that if you enjoy one there's room for both. I think Few Acres is slightly more polished and is arguably more accessible. 

2 - Joyride Turbo

I have a lot of car games for someone who spent a long long time self describing as "not a car guy." Briefly; Thunder Road, Formula D, Heat, Rallyman GT, Rallyman Dirt, Downforce. Of these, I've become obsessed with Heat for my racing fix. Rallyman is solid though more simulationy and less hollywood. Thunder Road captures the chaos well. 

Joyride is really fun. It brings enough to the table to make it worth keeping. It is ultimately a mario kart style game with the win condition being the race part. It isn't as easy to teach as thunder road but it isn't as hard as something like a wargame like Gaslands. I had been itching to get into gaslands again but this is much easier to table.  

1 - El Grande

Area Control. I love it. I like dudes on a map games. I like twists to genres. This has everything to make me feel like it is a "classic" game even from play one. The actual mechanics are easy enough to follow but the Castillo and accompanying rules add just enough rub to make the game stand out. It wasn't long enough to overstay its welcome but had more depth than a filler game. Just a super solid game all around. I was incredibly disappointed in Ethnos last month but this was a welcome surprise hit.

 

For housekeeping. Were close to a wargame post. I'm nearly done with the Halo Flashpoint starter. After that I've got some Flashpoint Wave 2 to paint and then I've got my eye on something historical for a little bit. I've been painting a bit here and there but need to do a day of just basing soon to actually finish this stuff off. 

 

 

Top 5 "New To Me" Board Games of February

 I've been hammering away on playing the unplayed games in my collection and wanted to highlight a couple of the better ones in a post. 

Honourable Mentions

Fellowship of the Ring: Trick Taking Game

    We play a lot of trick taking games. (My current favorite is Fishing). FoTR:TTG is a co-op trick taker similar to the crew. It has a campaign that introduces new mechanics slowly. We played the first 4 chapters in one go. Each chapter has you playing a relatively basic trick taker with the catch that each player has specific objectives. As an example you may need to win a specific number of tricks or not have won the most tricks. Its quick, its snappy, the art is great. 

Rallyman Dirt

    I will do a full write up some day on the Rallyman games but I really adore them. Push your luck racing games that offer a fair amount of strategy and a non-overwhelming amount of luck. I do see a place for both Rallyman GT and Rallyman Dirt and I quite like some of the additions to Dirt from a bookkeeping Quality of Life perspective. Solo mode works great but without a "par" track time I have no idea if I'm doing well unless I play a race multiple times. I prefer this one with people but the staggered start times make me want to put GT on the table instead. 

Top 5 of February

5 - Hansa Teutonica

    Hansa Teutonica (acquired through that collection) is more of a "dry euro" than what I tend to table. On the surface it's a route builder like something like Ticket to Ride, though theres a lot it brings to the table that make it a much meatier game. Each route will contribute points and help with a players overall strategy but specific routes will allow players to upgrade their player boards to make each turn more effective. Couple that with a super simple but effective "route blocking and player bumping" system as well as a scoring system that rewards players for being near the action, this is an incredibly interactive game for its looks. This did not go over at all with my usual group but I'd play it again in a heartbeat with players into this sort of thing. 

4 - Wayfarers of the South Tigris

This is one of the Garphill Renegade Games Historical "Worker Placement" Games I've become very obsessed with. Our 10 x 10 includes the ...West Kingom Trilogy this year but this is the first of the ... South Tigris set. Mechanically this is quite the step up from our last foray of Paladins of the West Kingdom but I found the game super interesting. It's effectively a tableau builder with a game timer of a central board that includes a sort of "race to the finish." Your turn consists of placing a single die, placing a single worker, or resting to recover your played dice. It has the usual Garphill feel of passing the same tokens back and forth but I found this one considerably more involved than Architects, Raiders of Scythia or Legacy of Yu. I'm excited for the expansions as well as the other two in the serious (which i believe on bgg have even higher weights.)

3 - Last Light

Last Light is a 4x with a promised play time "a fraction of Twilight Imperium." I've never played a board game 4x but I have some familiarity with the genre. After watching How to Play videos I was worried the game looked quite uninspiring on the table. The board is quite bland and it has quite the "pile of plastic" look to it. 

In practice the game was a heck of a lot of fun. We played twice in a row. The game is simultaneous (which frankly I don't like at all) but it capture the essence of a "big game" without all of the hassle of getting a "big game" to the table. I think of the headache of tabling the Blighted Reach Campaign for Arcs and some part of me just wants to put this on the table instead. 

All of my positives of this are what I love about gaming, the puzzle, the trash talk, the comradery, the physicality (the board literally spins around the center at differing rates) and the shared experience and emergent story telling. 

All of my cons come down to the same time play. I quite literally had no idea what the player on the other side of the table was doing until it was too late. I would love each player to say what theyre doing but it all just sort of happens and then its too late. The scoring is incredibly tight and it has some ability to recover from a bad start. I was the one who hit the 20 points to trigger endgame and I ended up losing by 3. It does "suffer" a bit from "bash the leader" mechanics but I think the right (communicative) group can over come this.

I played a friends kickstarter deluxe copy but already have the retail edition on my shelf of shame from last year which means I don't need to run out and get this one haha.

2 - Slay the Spire

Aside from having to sleeve 500 cards before I could play, Slay the Spire (the boardgame) mimics Slay the Spire (the less board game) so very well. Adding a coop mode as well as rebalancing the numbers a bit to make it a bit more accessible without needing to bust out a calculator makes this a great table presence. I enjoyed it a bit more than my non-video game playing wife did but I think it was a solid enough deckbuilder that she enjoyed it enough to start act 2. I really am impressed with how well the game translates to the table and am looking forward to playing more. The unlocks and upgrade system are solid and seem to allow for a full reset which I appreciate. The components are wonderful and the core gameplay loop is fun. I really really love roguelikes and roguelite games so to see it translated so well is just wonderful. I felt similarly about Dorfromantik but this really takes the cake.

1 - River of Gold

This reminds me a lot of when I first started board gaming and all I knew was big Fantasy Flight component heavy monster games but I didn't yet know there was a lot more to the hobby. I mean that positively I think as I remember those days with a fond nostalgic glimmer. River of Gold sees players sailing down a river based of a die roll and either building new buildings, moving their ships, or deliver orders. The single roll of a die each turn means your options are limited but not in a way that made me feel that my decisions were locked. The components are really lovely and although the iconography was a bit dense at first it clicked pretty early on. There actually a lot of meaningful decision making but the turn by turn choices are not overwhelming at all. I definitely want to play more of this. It was on my wishlist but out of stock everywhere when I tried to pick it up late last year, so when I saw stock I jumped on it. 

I have not done much in the way of painting this month or non board game hobbying. We did a fair amount of cleaning and reorganizing this month though and I partially blame that. I did paint crossbones for MCP and got most of the way through Clea. I also got most of the way through one of my first Display Kits for the year, a Troy McDevitt Dr. Doom figure. I did pick up a couple of historical things in the form of Nam 68 and a few 3d prints from 3D Breed as well as some stuff for Chicago Way. 

End of January Check In

 Checking in for the end of January

Shame Golf - 

Nice and easy so far. Im up to positive 13 points. I purchased Spectre Mythic and painted Master Chief for Flashpoint

 

Hobby Goals -  

So far, not a ton of progress. I'm a hair over halfway on a cabinet piece, the McDevitt Chibi Doom Figure purchased at Wonderfest who knows how long ago. I was showing a friend Marvel United and debating whether or not im going to start painting my collection when I remembered I might have something that would scratch a similar itch. 3 somethings actually. I have Doom, Hulk and Black Panther from this series. Base coats and the base are mostly done, on to highlights and shading. The biggest roadblock on this is just that its awkward to handle. 

I have been doing good on the board game related challenges but more on that in a bit. 

We managed to play a game of Trench Crusade (I enjoy it quite a bit and am looking forward to more) and I have most of my starter list at least base coated with a few figures just waiting for basing. 

I've somewhat cemented a more scheduled plan for the year to get in some  more regular gaming so hopefully that will help.

On the non hobby side, I've already read 2 books and am halfway through a third. Perhaps 5 books was a low bar.

Alphabet Challenge - 

Alphabet Challenge is going fantastic. 

Avant Carde
Bloc by Bloc
Cat in a Box
Distilled
Earth
Fishing
G
Hoplomachus Victorum
In the Footsteps of Darwin
J
K
Lords of Vegas
Moving Wild
N
O
P
Q
River Valley Glass Works
S
Trailblazers
U
V
Whirling Witchcraft
X
Y
Z

 

Percent of unplayed games - 

I am ecstatic to announce that I have finally crossed the 40% Threshold and am sitting at 39.87 percent unplayed as of this post. This was from what I can tell mostly due to adding expansions in this month. We played 2 Marvel United expansions as well as expansions for Arcs, River Valley, Cubitos and Lords of Vegas.

Total Games Played - 

This is also going well. 29 Games so far for January with one or two more planned hopefully. At this rate it should be no problem at all to get in the 372 I am shooting for.

Cool Board Game Stats

 Happy new year all. 

As mentioned in the previous post I have a few hobby goals this year related more specifically to Board Gaming. I thought I'd take a second to talk about and break down some stats. 

First of all I put three challenges in my list for this year. I'd like to by year end play 372 games, Complete and alphabet challenge, complete a 10 x 10, and get the percent of my unplayed games down to 20 or less

Quantity challenge:

Last year I set out to play 365 games. The numbers were looking ok until my daughter was born and I discovered that I actually enjoy solo gaming quite a bit. One game in particular caught my attention and that was Legacy of Yu. This is a solo only campaign game from Garphill Games and is basically a resource management worker placement type game. I'm about halfway thru the campaign and am expecting to finish that out this year. Unfortunately I got super sick the week of new years eve and had to cancel not 1 but 3 different game days we had planned and as a result I fell just 7 short of 365 plays. Hence the 372 this year. With solo gaming I think this is definitely possible. 

Alphabet Challenge:

This one is pretty straightforward. Play 1 game starting with each letter of the alphabet. Were only 2 weeks into the new year and have already played A, D, F, H, L, M, R and W. I expect this one to be fairly easy as well and want to take advantage of it to play some games on my shelf of shame/opportunity. The more difficult letters are all already accounted for so this should be actually kind of easy. 

The 10 x 10:

This challenge is super interesting to me. The idea is you play 10 games 10 times each. Originally the wife had no interest in joining me on this crusade saying that "I cant imagine there's a game I'd want to play 10 times." Conversely though (and ill touch on this more in a second) I need to slow down on purchasing new games and enjoy the ones I have. A good friend of mine made the point that there's so many games he truly enjoys on his shelf that he doesn't have time for already so why cloud the collection with just "ok" stuff. I'm inclined to agree to a point although if you know me you know that the collecting itself is half the fun. This is a strange hobby and in participating in forums there is a real divide when you ask "how many games is too many"

I ended up picking games that fit a fair amount of the same criteria that would be easy to justify tabling. 

Furnace
Earth
Arcs
River Valley Glass Works
Everdell
Architects of the West Kingdom
Marvel United
Quacks of Quedlinburg
Tiny Towns
Crokinole

All of these games have expansion content I haven't played except crokinole. In the Everdell and Architects categories, we're including the spin off games Duo and Farshore and for architects in particular we're counting any of the three games in the Medieval trilogy as well as Tomesage itself. (More on that when it hits the table)

For Marvel united I'm also going to count DC United which should be delivering this year I hope. 

In spirit of all this I went back and forth before finally deciding to purchase a tracker off etsy. It was expensive, (70 dollars) but ultimately worth it. All the labels as well as the meeples are magnetized and its just a super cool premium product that makes this a little more fun. I discovered a lot about myself last year in that Data and tracking things is an amazing motivator for me to follow through on stuff. 

Finally Played Percentage:

Even prior to the collection purchased mentioned last post, my wife and I have been keeping a spreadsheet of our game collection to make sure we dont buy anything we already have. We use BGG but this was a quick way to sort by player count or double check if we were in a game store if we saw something and were unsure if the other owned it. I added a column for whether or not we had each played each game and last year we had weekend dates to each pick a "new to one of us game" and try it out. 

I spent a little while learning excel and discovered I could write a basic formula to determine what percent of our collection we had actually played and to be honest it isn't pretty. As of this post 40.48% of our games I've never played. 

Now some of this is easily explained. My wife came with a lot of party games which aren't my favorite and since the pandemic large groups still havent bounced back. She also has a fairly large collection of Game of Thrones and Harry Potter games so even though I've played Scrabble in my illustrious career, I've never specifically played Harry Potter Scrabble.

The other half of this coin is that I conceptually like expansions. A lot of the list is expansion content. Something like 100 of the games by rough count are expansions. So even though I've played a ton of Furnace, we havent actually had Interbellum hit the table. Lords of Vegas was a wonderful addition to the collection but I have yet to touch Americana. 

Finally a fair amount of the problem is we keep finding games that arent on the list in addition to me picking stuff up. There are 2 specific games still on my short to buy list (Wayfarers of the South Tigris and Ezra and Nemiah), 1 additional game will be an impulse buy if i see it  (kickstarter game that I'm unclear whether it will be retailed) and then I have my eye on just two KS coming (Black Orchestra and the South Tigris expansions and Moonsaga) but other than that after a great Boardlandia Sale I'm taking an extended break from buying more. I have a ton of Kickstarters delivering this year and frankly just too much stuff. 

I have been starting to trim the collection a bit though through facebook marketplace and will continue doing that throughout the year. 

 

Year End Wrap Up

 I'm sitting here writing the wrap up a month early here on Thanksgiving day. I don't want to say I've "thrown in the towel" but the reality is I don't see my self being able to make any big project posts between now and the end of the year. I'm sure you can tell from the last post that this won't be a big exciting update. I mentioned in the last post that things were changing. I spent the last year adjusting to a new role at work (which required a fair bit of travel that has now mercifully calmed down) and more recently we welcomed the birth of our first child. Since then things have begun to calm a bit but more recently than that I've been dealing with my moms basement flooding. The damage was thankfully not too terrible but it's required me to take significant stock of what I want to bother transferring out of her house and frankly a lot of things got binned and did not make the cut. 

This isn't meant to be any sort of pity party type of post but its all to put some vague perspective on things. 

I had some opportunity to work from home recently which allowed me to paint the Vespid half of the new kill team box but haven't begun the other components yet. Beyond that I began cleaning my workspace out in a significant way. 

We had a very interesting diversion recently as well. I spent a while waxing about why I've been gravitating harder towards board games and in the very beginning of September something wild happened. Paul calls me out of the blue asking if I need any games? An open ended rhetorical question of course. Long story short, a friend of a friend knows of someone who just inherited a massive collection of games. Ill skip the gory details but in brief we spent 700 dollars and, assuming I did the math right, acquired around 3500 worth of games. I paid somewhere around 8 dollars a game and got quite a few "grail" games. The guy loved his games and most of these had sleeves, expansions or promos included. Due to needing to catalog this stuff I've found myself weirdly fascinated by data lately. I'll leave that thread dangling with my most humbling stat. We've apparently never played approximately 40 percent of our collection. 

So is this the part where I lay out lofty goals for the year? It is. Of note, theres 3 board game related ones in here. I may also dabble with board game reviews but time will tell on that front. I will for sure be making some board game related posts however as I work my way through the unplayed games in the collection.

Paint 2 factions for Crisis Protocol and play at least 2 games

Paint 2 cabinet pieces

Paint 2 complete forces for Shatterpoint and play at least 2 games

Finish a second army for Full Spectrum Dominance and try the game

Play 3 games of Trench crusade with painted models

Create a 4 x 4 Modular trench board (if we like the game)

Play 365 board games

Complete a Board game 10 x 10

Get the list of unplayed games down to 20% or less

Finish 1k of Word Bearers

Try Horus Heresy

Play Lord of the Rings with a newly painted list

End the year with a sub 200 golf score

Try spectre, arsenal, breacher or another "modern" game

Finish the TF2 Project

Paint the Halo Flashpoint box

Paint my spinespur collection

Try Blkout with painted models

Play a fantasy skirmish game

Play Mad Maximilian. 

Finish the Hivestorm Box and play Kill Team

Play a Historical Game

Finish Reading 5 books

It's not all bad news however. While perusing my list of painted stuff this year I did notice I actually painted a fair amount of stuff. 

I painted a fair bit of Legions Imperialis stuff early in the year. I also managed to paint an entire spearhead for Age of Sigmar. I got rid of quite a pile of stuff but what killed me (as always) is the cult of the new. Even though I painted the Stormcast, I purchased the new starter and have yet to make any progress on it. Same goes for the flesheater courts as well as Hivestorm. One major number killer was the purchase of 2 boxes of wargames atlantic samurai. Theyre tiny and take up almost no room but man are there a lot of figures in there. 

I picked goals this year as I always do based on what I'm into now mixed with a touch of "whats going to catch my eye soon" which is hard because come Con season I usually get distracted. With a new child we won't be attending shows this year however which should cut down on that a fair amount. 

Happy New Year and here's to the year ahead.

Mid Year Check In

 Hello,

Boy has it been a year.

I'll be honest, when I originally started this blog it was called Monday Night Gaming. That was the night our boardgame group met. The same boardgame group I would try desperately to convert into a War Game group. That never took quite right but over time that group grew and changed and adapted. It would eventually become the group that met at the Hobby Shop I worked at and it would eventually more or less come to a screeching halt with Covid. Now having moved close to 40 minutes further, changed careers and started a family, I find myself missing the regular club nights quite a bit. I still find myself buying and painting and planning but the follow thru (which to be honest was never really all there) is now even sparser. This will not be an exciting post (fewer and further between now) but its a post I'd like to take the time to write. Lets talk about my relationship to the hobby and board games. 

I've always loved table top games. The tactile feel, the dice chucking, the camaraderie. What I don't love is having mountains of figures and terrain to store, set up, transport. I've been an avid boardgamer since I discovered that board games weren't just Monopoly back in 2011. Board Games can be a lot of things, and don't be surprised if I talk about them more on this blog for reasons that hopefully make sense as this post drones on. Board games can be quick to set up, quick to play, self contained. My wife likes board games, though she'll occasionally humor me with a wargame (and has been bugging me to get Shatterpoint and MCP back on the table) 

I've found great joy in a lot of these games. Origins game fair, (our second trip was a month ago) reminds me of my first trip to Fall-in. Coming home with 30 to 40 new board games and actually playing them all before the summer ends is not something you can do with Wargames. I'd be luck to paint a warband for a game before summer is over most years. I've become smitten with big experience boardgames like John Company or Arcs. I've delighted in solo games like For Northwood, Kinfire Delve, or Resist.  Boardgames are just frankly so much more accessible and that means the world for getting them to the table.

I had all but taken my hands out of the wargame pot though I'd still buy the odd kit here and there mostly for games like MCP. I balk at the cost of some of these now thinking things like "thats a whole game" for the price of one box of figures. There are a few things I've committed to though. I bought some Wargames Atlantic knights for barons war, which in turn caused me to dig all of my First Crusades project out and actually paint some Saracens. 

I found myself looking at the pre-order for two major GW releases though. First was AOS4. I looked at the beautiful skaven models, thought hard about how I never painted my Dominion Stormcast. I had wanted to convert them a bit, make them more low fantasy, and just had never actually taken cutter to sprue. I said to myself "eh, as much as AOS has been one of the only games I've played regularly, I dont really need this" I promptly opened my Dominion box and started assembling models I already had. In about a week I've built and painted most of the Spearhead force for Stormcast. Opting for a super simple scheme to plow through them quickly. 

I found myself looking at the new Hive Secundus box for Necromunda as well. I ended up looking at that and thinking, it doesn't really fit on my "schedule" of goals. I opted to take a harder look at Mordheim. A game myself and a few of the gamers I still regularly talk to have been eyeing like hawks. I dug through my stls and found some files to print. More or less all stuff I already owned. 

A lot of this hobby spending year has been pushed hard on to board games. Big experience games like John Co, or Wonderlands War. A lot of my hobby spending has been on Kickstarters. Mostly board games but I did cave on the Song of Ice and Fire Tactics campaign. Time spent looking in hobby shops has resulted in going home to start on projects already purchased. The allure of the collection is still there but it's been a huge motivator to dig out a pile of kits I've already spent the money on and revisit them as though it were brand new. 

A decade spent working in a hobby shop changes your perspective on buying. Kits are purchased on launch to avoid them not being available when you want them. Stuff never expires but it does go out of print. I definitely consider myself privileged in that regard. As I find it harder and harder to find places to store these things though, it has really caused me to look at what I purchase now, or save for later. As I've moved out of the hobby as a career its caused me to reassess what I "need" vs "want" at a very different pace

I've talked about it before but I hate taking photos, its most of what slows this blog to a crawl. The follow thru, sure but the photos are what stop the starting. I find myself in a bit of a hobby renaissance again where I'm painting regularly and excited about figures again. Coming soon (or maybe never depending) I'll post another update to the goals but you can also look forward to

Baron's War Outremer and the First Crusades
Age of Sigmar Spearhead and slow grow
Mordheim
Some Boardgame Coverage

You can also look forward to continued poor impulse control. Some habits never die. Since drafting this original post (1 month ago) I ended up getting the AOS4 box as well as the Hive Secundus box. I've also sadly bought into the Wargames Atlantic 10mm samurai range (under the age old "but i only need one box" lie)

I do want to continue to use this blog for me but I definitely recognize that without pretty pictures my musings are a little dry. I just want stuff to show you and I promise it is coming. As a life update we're now less than a month off from our first child so we will see how that goes when it comes to hobby. 

Thanks as always

Some Book Keeping - An Update to the 2024 Hobby Goals

 Hello,

Since we last spoke I've done an enormous amount of stuff with very little to check off these tasks. As we last left it on the blog it looked something like this

Paint Legions Imperalis Army
Print and Paint Legions Imperalis City Table
Play at least 3 games of Legions Imperalis with fully painted armies and terrain
Print and play Full Spectrum Dominance
Paint 2 Complete Factions For Crisis Protocol and play at least 3 games
Paint 2 Complete Forces for Shatterpoint and play at least 3 games
Play Don't Look Back
Finish Boarding Action Table
Play Country Road Z
Play Spectre (or another modern style game)
Try Dead by Lead
Try Hobgoblin
Finish at least 2 Cabinet Pieces
Play Test of Honor at least 3 games
Play Firefight with Veermyn Army
End the year with a sub 200 score

Since this original posting I've tweaked some things. First of all, I'm going to get rid of two of these goals. Full Spectrum Dominance (which i have yet to invest more than purchasing stls into) and Dead by Lead (which occupies the same real estate as a few other things on the list) are both gone.

I've obviously added a few goals as well.

 Paint Legions Imperalis Army
Print and Paint Legions Imperalis City Table
Play at least 3 games of Legions Imperalis with fully painted armies and terrain
Paint 2 Complete Factions For Crisis Protocol and play at least 3 games
Paint 2 Complete Forces for Shatterpoint and play at least 3 games
Play Don't Look Back
Finish Boarding Action Table
Play Country Road Z
Play Spectre (or another modern style game)
Try Hobgoblin
Finish at least 2 Cabinet Pieces
Play Test of Honor at least 3 games
Play Firefight with Veermyn Army
End the year with a sub 200 score

Added
Paint 1k Points of Word Bearers for Horus Heresy
Play Horus Heresy
Finish a 2k list for Old World and try the rules
Try Kill Team
Play a Fantasy Skirmish Game
Try Guildball
Play This is not a Test

Some of these are fairly obvious to most but I wanted to add a hair of context. I always wanted to try guild ball and went as far as to get the kickoff set and a few others but when SFG shitcanned the game I lost interest and punted (ha) it on at a flea market. Since then they've relaunched the game and have released Kickoff as a free stl and print copy. I've printed the two teams and some accessories and am almost done with one of them. I have a game vaguely scheduled for 2 weeks from now so this should be a slam dunk. I made it a goal because it seems like a nice easy win and it will prevent me from painting 11/12 figures and then never trying the game.

Horus Heresy has been on my own list since the launch of Age of Darkness. I've been reading the novels and Pauls been talking the game up. We played a Zone Mortalis style game of One Page Rules today and I used all painted stuff and am actually getting reasonably close to 1k already. I'm pretty excited for this one. 

I dug all of my fantasy stuff out of my moms house and brought it home to pour through. I'm fairly confident I have more than 2k of dwarves and am probably pretty close on Tomb Kings. Enough to get started at least. I figure these figures should double for Hobgoblin later.

I want to try either Song of Blades or Thud and Blunder this year just because. I also just picked up something called Torch and Shield but more on that another time. This is not a test has always ranked on my "i want to play this game" radar and this year I may have another friend interested in playing. 

Finally how is the current stuff coming?

I have a little over 1.5k of both Solar Aux and Imperial Fists done for Legions Imp. The Boarding action table is totally printed, magnetized and test paints are done. We used the terrain today and I'm super happy with how it came out. 

I played don't look back today as well but forgot to grab pictures. I was a little underwhelmed but am going to give it a few more goes. The first edition was a lot of fun but I think some bad luck made the wrong rolls happen too soon which led to a lackluster game. 

To wrap, heres a few photos of the heresy stuff.