Back on the Horse

I've been playing Malifaux as my main game for over five years now.  Since almost the beginning of the game and the UK scene.  Playing as long as I have from time to time I need to take a break.  The mood will come upon me suddenly and I'll have no motivation to play for a while.

In my experience trying to play through this loss of motivation is counter-productive so I use these breaks to mess about with other games.  Then after finding these games inferior to Malifaux my desire to play resets. That's how it was this time, after a few months inactivity I woke up one morning a week back refreshed and raring to go.

The only problem with not playing Malifaux for any extended period is how quickly your skills degrade.  I've been playing less an eighth of the rate of games I need to be sharp, so right now I'm slow and my moves are clumsy.  I'm in the process of sharpening back up and aiming to be more than competent again soon. 

For the main topic of this post I wanted to very briefly overview some of the games I've messed about with while I've been taking a break and what I think of them;

Dropzone Commander;  This is a really fun game. If you were looking for a 10mm SciFi version of Malifaux this would be it. My only criticism is it's one of those games where you roll low numbers of D6s, and as a result the variance is higher than I'd like.  If you can cope with that though give it a whirl. The minis are a dream to paint.

Alien vs Predator: The Hunt Begins;  I love me some Space Hulk, and this game shares a lot of DNA with that seminal title. It's also got some great ideas of its own, a cool board, and stunning minis.  The deal breaker though is the rule book, which has the quality of writing you'd expect from a free PDF home brew rule set.

It's so bad that I'm actually offended Prodos Games had the nerve to ship the game with the rules in this state.  When I grumbled about this on twitter they tweeted me asking what rules I was confused by, when I politely told them they chose not respond. That's the last time they'll receive my custom.

Hearthstone; As a reformed cardboard crack addict (read MtG player) this one hooked me pretty quickly and suspect I'll keep playing it. It's a fantastically fun and tactical digital CCG. It has some truly elegant game design and a monetisation model I could appreciate even while it emptied my bank account.

That's it for this post. I'm lining up a few more blog posts at the moment, aiming for shorter three to five hundred word posts quickly covering a key topic. So check back soon for some more gaming ramblings...