My personal “State of the Hobby” for now…
40K (and 30K I guess):
Honestly, I haven’t kept up with this one much… Not a lot of “hobby time” over the summer, so
the minis are still awaiting sorting/packing.
GW has not released much of anything 40K related as they were busy
killing off WFB. I have WAY too much
stuff for this game, and it is filling the shelves in the Basement of Doom™… My Marine armies are all quite good with the
new book I understand. I do not actually
HAVE them, no GW purchases at all this year.
NOT saying that I support or am boycotting by any means, wanted to make
that clear. Just burned out and find the
game(s) in their current state to be uninteresting to me. Uninteresting in that Fantasy is dead and my
armies simply no longer exist. Yes, I
can play “Kings of War” when it comes out and assuming that anyone local plays
it. Meh.
So, my Wood Elves are still awaiting stripping and repainting as I
painted MANY of them in the late 80’s and they are really poorly done :-).. So, they along with their High Elves brothers
are already packed up or staged to be packed away… My 40K stuff?
In my sorting I am finding even more things than I remember having, and
it is a bit discouraging knowing I will not enjoy playing the modern game. Pretty sure I have 5 Land Raiders of various
types, some 25+ Rhino hulls of various loadouts… My DA army alone has 30+ Terminator class
suits, so I could field their First Company almost complete at any given time… Wolves?
Yeah, WAY too many of those… I
never bought their “Wolf Cavalry” as I just found the idea alone to be “bad” (avoiding
the term “stupid”, but…)… Eldar? Well, I can tell you the age of most of them
by saying that the overwhelming bulk of the Aspect Warriors I have are actually
lead… Picked up a BUNCH when GW went
from lead to pewter and clearance off the existing stock of lead minis. The resin vehicles are all pre GW having ANY
vehicles for them as well, except of course for the War Walkers which went from
“un-killable monsters” to “use in squadrons of 3 because they die so quickly”… Sadly I DO have “a few” of them, all old
metal minis… But back on subject, WAY
too much stuff, in the process of being shelved for the foreseeable future.
STAW: Star Trek
Attack Wing is picking back up and we are blazing through the OP events to get caught
up from the 6+ month “dead time” when various players just quit the game
altogether and WizKids had pretty well killed off the game with incredibly
STUPID rules, releases and card combos.
Sadly, they still exist in a lot of ways so this game I have to admit is
still sliding a bit for me… The way we
play locally it is a fun and balanced game, but having just played the “No
Holds Barred” builds at Gen Con? No,
WizKids still has a VERY poorly written game with things like those stupid Borg
mines “attacking” outside of the “combat phase” allowing no normal defenses or
even things like Cloak? REALLY badly
written, and it was stupidity like that which killed the game the first time at
the Gopher for us… So, fun, and I’m
still picking up the ships for “my” factions (Federation, Klingon and Romulan)
because we’re still having a lot of fun here…
So, still playing and enjoying but the game itself has the feeling of
stagnation from the manufacturer… So, I’m
not really confident it will exist in a year…
D&D AW: Much better than STAW in terms of balance, but just too much stuff coming out too quickly I think... For me at least of course :-) NOT a bad game, but I guess I am having a harder time getting too excited about it with the feeling of the standard WizKids "throw out a BUNCH of stuff, collect as much $ as possible then let the game die off" feel to it... Being D&D maybe it will be different, but...
X-Wing: REALLY
interesting times…. Their Wave 7 has/is
hitting, and there are a number of things changing in the meta because of it… Combined with the leaked “V2” starter and the
Episode VII ships in it? New Damage
Deck, New X-Wings and TIE Fighters…
Models look the similar, but the X-Wing gets a native Boost action, the
Ties get Shields, etc… New abilities and
cards, etc… Along with the announced
Wave 8 stuff and the Star Wars: Rebels ships?
Guessing this is where the bulk of my near future purchases will be. Albeit not THAT much really when compared to
say, 40K… The Starter will be ~ the same
cost as a single 40K book, and the ships themselves are in the single mini
price range… From a purely “do I enjoy
playing the game” perspective, I have to say this is my current “go to”
game. Deceptively simple, but that is
why it really works so well I think.
Nothing so overpowering as you find in STAW, and FFG actually IS
concerned about that silly “balance” thing.
Big tournament coming up in a few weeks, so trying out a few builds,
might have to get Vassal set back up to run tests against folks online… But in general, I am REALLY enjoying this
game so far. The fact that it has such a
large local following I think is an excellent sign… That and frankly, even when I am not winning,
it never really feels like I lost in the “army building” stage or before with
my choice of army simply being “lower” on the power totem pole… Yes, I stubbornly played some armies at times
that were perceived to be “weak” just to prove a point or get better at the
game myself by doing so, but in a real competition I never would bring such a
force… Yes, I could build a silly force
in X-Wing, but honestly, even those are not without merit and could at least
stand against some builds. There IS a
very real series of hard(ish) counters in X-Wing like Rock-Paper-Scissors, but
even that is not a guarantee of course with it being a dice game. The Swarm builds do very well against a lot
of things, but die to others, etc… My
Twin Laser Turret (TLT) builds will do well against a lot, but I think will not
be so successful against the Swarms…
Just not enough damage output…
So, I am building more of a hybrid build for the most part with a few
TLT ships and either a Bomber (K-Wing) or another “Big” ship
(Aggressor/Firespray/YT) to provide a deterrent against someone simply rushing up
to the Range 1 “weapon dead zone” the TLT has or trying to overwhelm my
squadron with numbers. Not sure how
successful it will be, but it will at least be fun to play, and as the old
Y-Wing was always my favorite Fighter from that universe… Glad to get to field more of them without
feeling like I am playing at a disadvantage…
Pretty sure that a viable “Star Wars” game was always one of
the things GW knew would be the death of 40K…
Mind, X-Wing and 40K are very different games, and until a “ground
combat” game gets released in the SW universe setting, not really thinking
there is direct competition, but… In a
completely unscientific glance at the 2 remaining Game Stores locally, one
carries NO GW product at all, and the other the GW space seems to be shrinking
with fewer new toys coming out and guessing they are stuck with some things
from previous editions as the release schedule for 40K was REALLY frantic for a
while there, and those expensive hardback books getting an annual replacement
is just not really in my budget at least…
Yes, first world problems, I know…
Not being shot at anymore, so every day like that is a good one, I’m
living in the “bonus time”, etc…
