Over three four (five? what even is time?) months since a post, time flies when you’re stuck in lockdown. The motivation to write has been low due to a ridiculous workload at my real-life job and the inability to get out and play games. I’m also conscious that I tend to procrastinate on things I should be doing as I’m constantly striving to reach my ideal of perfection which prevents me starting – this reaches all corners of my life and is something I’ve been actively working on and have been trying to think of shorter, more experimental ideas for the blog I can work on in my downtime – more to come on that.
Anyway, enough about real life struggles, let’s talk about the hobby, as my life has not been devoid of the other part of the hobby, despite the current environment.
Gaming
Gaming has been limited, given I can’t congregate with my usual groups, but I have managed to play the first few Rangers of Shadow Deep missions (more on this in future posts) and have been playing a lot of Arkham Horror Living Card Game (see my initial thoughts here, I’m surprised it took me this long to get back to it!) with my Special Lady Friend. It’s fair to say that I love the game a lot, and whilst there are several ridiculous aspects to it as you get deeper in (“I’m going to fire my handgun at this Conglomeration of Spheres after it ate my Machete, oh look, I kill it”) it’s still very fun, incredibly punishing and an incredible story driven experience.
I’ve also got several other solo gaming adventures to engage in once I work out how best to manage the space in my unit to have a more dedicated space to play in. These include the Hard City boardgame (a Kickstarter I was super excited about and painted immediately on receipt), the Hellboy boardgame (I didn’t have a good experience the first time I played it but need to revisit), Dracula’s America solo play, Forstgrave Perilous Dark (more exciting with second edition out now!) and, of course, there’s plenty more Rangers of Shadow Deep missions to play through.
Hobby
I’ve been keeping up a little hobby work as inspiration strikes, but productivity is certainly down on last year. Not having regular gaming sessions certainly robs some motivation to get more models painted! That said, when I get into a project it tends to become relatively consuming, witness the 54 models from Hard City that got pumped out in a month.
Some random models I’ve had for a while (one since 2013 as the base advises me!), not particular game or project, just enjoying painting some random characters. Although if I ever manage to paint 300 more Spartans and several thousand Persians or perhaps four hobbits, a dwarf, an elf and two humans, I could make some really cool dioramas….
A major focus has been Marvel Crisis Protocol, a game with a surprising level of tactical depth and which is a lot of fun. I’ve been keeping up with model releases until the most recent wave (Spiderman releases), which I haven’t had a chance to pick up yet, but with Dr Strange coming out soon I’ll probably backfill my collection at that point.
In addition, I’ve also expanded my modern terrain collection to ensure that I have plenty of terrain to populate a table (or three…). The dumpling stand and hawker cart at from Knights of Dice, who I’ve no doubt mentioned before as an excellent purveyor of MDF terrain kits, as well as high quality figure cases.
With Frostgrave second edition coming and a friend having recently made some progress on his Summoner warband I dusted off this long dormant project. So now my Witchhunters ready to hunt down the demons and those who would make pacts with them in Felstad, as well as a few stand-in .
I also took the opportunity to start filling out some bespoke scatter for Frostgrave and Rangers (somehow I’ve never gotten six actual statues done before despite that being the first scenario in Frostgrave First Edition…), as well as filling in some more pages of the Frostgrave bestiary.
Conclusion
I can’t wait to get a game to the table again and for real life to settle down a little bit. That said, having time and space to get stuck into some larger hobby projects (more on a big one I’m coming to the end of soon… hopefully). Stay safe.
Leave a Reply