Just realised I've yet to register my monthly post. I'm still painting and hobbying but at a reduced rate as I am waiting my budget to recharge.
The Forest (haunted forest where overusing magic makes you lose your characters) is awaiting more ragged aventurers/wizards to complete three warbands (King's Rangers, Baron's men at arms, and the Mage's Guild). Parcel just arrived today! I continue to experiment with rules, namely (a) making a RPG 'feel' without the crappy/clunky mechanics that infests 99% of RPGs and (b) melee combat that has decisions without being too complex in its mechanics.
30 Year War/ECW. I've painted my Bloody Miniatures characters (recommend!) and have based/prepped another ~30 or so pike/muskets/horse each side. I don't have an exact project for them as yet - I've painted them blue/cool tones vs red/warmer tones as I often do to make matched enemies. I do know it will be bloody, violent, civil-war-esque and there will be a twist - some sort of dark twisted undead/sorcery/plague/hellmouth to mirror that very violent period (some parts of Germany lost 50% of their population.)
I bought these minis to revive my disinterest in my boringly similar Warlord ECW minis. I've found lately sometimes you need to buy more, to revive a project (kinda the opposite of the sunk cost fallacy) e.g. my Frostgrave plastics have allowed me to use/kitbash many unused sprues.
I'm still working out a suitable grimdark 'setting' for these minis that isn't just a zombie apocalypse. Suggestions welcome!
Given I haven't done a final highlight my paint job certainly does not do the minis justice. They ooze character and will spice up my boring rank-and-file collection.
Skull & Bones. But a lot of my gaming times has been spent rewatching Pirates of the Carribbean with my kids and playing Skull and Bones (a pirate ship PC game) with them as well.
Skull and Bones is a good example of how expectations and advertising can ruin a game. It was hyped as "AAA" and "Black Flag but multiplayer" and failed miserably. Compared to Assassins' Creed it's like 1/4 of a game - it's like they pulled the ship portions of Odyessey/Black Flag, turned it into a game but removed everything else - you can only leave your ship to go shopping(!) and as such it's inferior to Sea of Thieves (or Windrose) and even ancestors like Sid Meier's Pirates. However, if you view it as a pirate ship game where you roleplay as a schooner/brig it is competing more with indie titles like Windward or Tempest. It's also quite user-friendly, and shines in co-op.
....I call this "Anthem syndrome" - the game sets massive expectations, flat out lies/fails to deliver most of them, and gets hated into oblivion and nothing about the game can be good by players who have jumped on the hate bandwagon - many without even trying the game. It's possible for a game to completely fail to live up to expectations/deliver promises AND still be fun. They're not mutually exclusive. E.g. I paid $5 for Anthem, enjoyed zipping around in an Iron Man suit on an alien planet with mates for 30hrs. I don't plan to ever play it again but I certainly got my money's worth and had fun. Would I have been mad if I bought into the hype and bought a premium pre-purchase edition? Sure. But anyone who does that - it's kinda on them.
Anyway, Skull and Bones cost us $5 for each PC (Ubi panic sales ftw) and we can team up fighting ships, convoys, forts and (naturally) sea monsters in a mythic Indian Ocean. I've played 50 hrs and I and the kids haven't "ground" anything yet (i.e. we are still doing new missions and tasks and haven't had to repeat old ones ad nauseam to get stuff).
Anyway, I'll count the dodgy paint jobs. 658 minis painted this year - so far.
My pirate craze has inspired me to finally push past the first episode of Black Sails (I'm now on S2, really enjoying it) after trying to get into it twice previously. Naturally, I am now eyeing off age of sail ship miniatures but Black Seas (surprisingly affordable in Australia) has rigging (blegh!). I do have some 1:2400 from Tumbling Dice but I can't figure out what ship is which.... ...if someone knows how to identify them please let me know... They are also a bit too chunky to "spark joy" though they are very sturdy playing pieces. Heretic that I am, I'll probably pick easy/fun AoS rules like Fighting Sail instead of "proper" nerdy rules.
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