Invincible RPG AAR and thoughts

I ran the first two scenarios from the new Invincible RPG box set with all the bells and whistles (counters, maps, etc.) that it comes with. My gang is a bunch of teenagers who are used to Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) and this was a big change for them to have maps, miniatures and powerful characters with a bunch of stuff they can do. Most of them had seen the show, but a few had not. While not a review of the whole game, I’m going to compare this to Champions and of course FASERIP.

NOTE: this has SPOILERS (but not for the whole adventure).

The Mauler Twin fight

This is a fight in a warehouse with the Mauler Twins. There’s lots of stuff that can (and should) explode, and some bystanders that can get squished too. This went pretty fast but there was complaining about just how much stuff the characters had on their sheet (again these guys play DCC exclusively) with both the powers and talents, it’s a lot but they got the hang of it. Atom Eve was considered underpowered until the player realized that he could create three levels of armor and then started doing tricks with her matter control power. Bulletproof took out the gun turrets and one of the Maulers very quickly (the Charge move/attack that uses a strength roll rather than fighting is pretty great) with some good rolls even though the Maulers have health of 17. He did get dropped by the last Mauler’s energy weapon and suffered the bashed up injury effect (so needed a few days to heal up). The other effects from their weapons (stunning and taking stress), I didn’t use much as there wasn’t a lot of time before they were beaten down (2 vs 4 heroes will do that).

Social scene

Between each battle there is a the chance for characters to get in a social scene with their team mates or others, this is acted out but has the mechanical effect of removing stress from characters between fights. Stress is gained from many things, but mostly from ‘pushing’ (rerolling) skill checks. A big combat will burn a LOT of stress.

This I assumed would be the most awkward as these guys were teenagers, but it turned out likely far better than with your normal ultra-cynical adult players. The prompt cards worked great and the only issue is that the two guys that had not seen the show were a bit out of the loop (they had Robot and Bulletproof, so not complicated social interactions). In a normal game without the prompt cards, these guys would likely struggle to come up with anything, so those helped. If you are running a game with custom characters or heroes from the back of the book, I would make a bunch of potential ‘prompts’ for your game before you go into a session.

Machine Head fight

This is a big one that requires a ton of work for the GM. The players run one hero each, the GM has to run five at the same level of complexity as the player’s one character! This is very dangerous ground as it gets into why Exalted is such a bad game and impossible to run for any GM, and why 13th Age, which abstracts creature powers which trigger based on the attack roll, is so much easier (and the players don’t know the difference anyway). That said, because the enemies and their powers aren’t super complex in Invincible, this was manageable even with all 5 villains, easier than Champions and a bit easier than FASERIP. Most powers just do one thing in combat and don’t spiral off into sub-powers. With this many combatants, it’s also OK to not play optimally as the GM, but do the best you can. For sure you will forget a Power effect or Talent here and there though. Especially GMs first time with this system/game: read all the enemies before hand a few times.

The fight went as follows, Magneattack locked down Robot (because he’s made of metal) and started using him as a battering ram against the other heroes, most of which were tied up by Tether Tyrant. KillCannon just blasted away from a distance at anyone that didn’t have the ability to dodge (ie, used both their full and quick action for the turn). The magma villain was using his ability to slugfest (plus his emanation power of hot lava) from a zone away. We had to call it before we finished the fight, but it looked like it could have gone either way IF Titan continued to fight for the Machine Head side (which he wouldn’t have). These were a bunch of villains with interesting powers, but WAY lower health than the Mauler Twins, so the players were trying to queue up Bulletproof so he could do a charge move and knock the crap out of them one by one. Atom Eve was able to throw the piano and sofas around to get extra dice. I let her use the ‘trap’ special effect even though it was a ranged attack (trap is usually reserved for slugfest only).

My main question as a GM is when to PUSH rolls as the Villains (ie, Reroll their attack). A good roll will put the fight in a totally different spot, and a great roll will destroy players/enemies. Vs the Maulers, Bulletproof rolled five 6’s and mopped the floor with one of the Maulers and smashed him into the other one. If the villains get a great roll, you can kiss one of the characters goodbye for that fight, which I’m assuming is by design.

System Review

I’ve played/run (mostly run) Champions, TMNT (Palladium), FASERIP and the weird dice Marvel game that came out in 2012 (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying).

Let’s compare this to Champions first. Running it as a GM, Invincible is way easier and cleaner than Champions. The powers are clean, the dice pools are small and the outcome of opposed rolls, powers and attacks are easy to manage in comparison. The level of heroes were were using were out of the fight quickly so it wasn’t just a constant sluggathon. Also the ability to use stunts and to use powers in odd ways rather than everything being tightly controlled was way better. I don’t want to rag on Champions to much as it was my first Superhero RPG and one that I had a lot of fun with as a kid but this was way better to run any day of the week. Making characters in Champions is fun, but once they hit the table, it’s not so great.

FASERIP

Invincible is a cleaned up, modernized version of Marvel’s FASERIP game by Jeff Grubb, with a dice pool instead of the big chart, where characters spend extra successes to do a variety of stunts rather than just one or two from a list (stun and slam were the FASERIP ones). Like FASERIP, Invincible uses Zones for movement (excellent) and abstracts flying levels (also excellent). There are a few things that are far superior to FASERIP and that is how slugfests work and how stunts work. The game has shaved off some of the edges that made FASERIP really great though as well.

Slugfests are when two characters are in the same zone and use their fighting (or sometimes strength) stat to duke it out. If a player has a quick action left for a block, it becomes an opposed roll. The character that wins the opposed roll can do some damage INCLUDING the defender on a counter-attack. This makes slugfests more interesting (even without stunts which I will get to below) and makes the fights thankfully faster. If you can’t block you are going to get hit (which some characters don’t care about much) and if you do block there’s a chance you can simply pummel your attacker. This is great.

Stunts are NON-POWER stunts tied to either slugfest attacks or ranged attacks. Stunting has been a boon and and issue to RPG’s since the 1990’s and many RPG’s have had trouble integrating them (especially Exalted), with the gold standard being Mythras with it’s special effects system that takes the Runequest combat system from good to the best there is. In Invincible, there is a whole list of them a bit like Mythras, but quite not as situational or exhaustive. The base stunts are very mechanically solid and there isn’t a lot of fluff here that players will never use. During the game there was a lot of double damage and stun used by players and enemies to try to bypass armor. No one had sharp weapons so the deadly strike special effect only accidentally came into play because I didn’t realize characters couldn’t use that without some sort of sharp weapon/power. That’s the only stunt I think is a little OP from the list.

There’s also the ability to come up with your own stunts based on the circumstances, which is critical to this type of game to move away completely from the tightly controlled (and very boring) combat of say 5th or 4th edition D&D. Yet it stays FAR away from the free-for-all story-driven nonsense of FATE or Masks, etc. where powers, effects and dice are all subservient to some player or GM description. Overall I feel like Stunts and how they are generated are a strong part of the game.

What is not in the Invincible game that is in FASERIP are Power Stunts. In FASERIP, Power Stunts are a way to increase your powers through risky, repeated non-standard use. For example, a hero with water-control based powers uses them to attack, but then decides to try a grapple with his water control as a power stunt. The character spends Karma and makes the roll, if it’s successful, the character gets to use their powers that way. Then they mark on their sheet that they have used a power like this and track it over time. If they do it 10 times, they GET that power effect permanently without a stunt. This is SLOW going but was a really interesting way to encourage players to use their powers in new and crazy ways. This is not in Invincible at all.

In Invincible, Karma is still in the game, but can’t be spent to help rolls, or do Power Stunts. It is experience and can be used to buy additional powers or effects on powers, but they aren’t tied to what the characters actually do in the game as much as in FASERIP. This was my only gripe so far with the system not being as open as FASERIP. Overall though, everything worked really well and I am looking forward to a LOT more content from Free League, especially that allows broadening out from just Invincible.

TLDR: If you like FASERIP, you will like Invincible.

Virtua Fighter: Crossroads

After the last update to Virtua Fighter V that added the Kumite mode (where you go around to different arcades and try to win tournaments) for single player, I had very strong suspicions that we were going to see a new VF, and so we shall. VF: Crossroads was officially announced last week with both gameplay and story videos. I love me some VF 1 v 1 (I think it’s overall my favorite fighting game), and I ALSO love Urban Reign, and this looks like some holy mixture of both of those games.

We’ve seen a few of the characters so far, Pai Chan is the only returning one (so far) and ALL of them look really good, especially compared to the PC /modern console versions of VF 5 which for some reason just could not get the faces quite right.

Anyway this will be one to watch and is due out next year. I am jacked to the tits.

Gamplay Video

Twisted Metal V???!!!

When I saw the new Twisted Metal show getting a second season (and now a third), I thought for SURE there would be a new game from Sony? Where is it? Nowhere?

So some dude made his own. I have played this now for about 2 hours straight and it is the shit. The physics engine is a little wonky (like TM1 and 2), the car animations in some cases are a bit odd (Spectre), but if you have ever dreamed of an amalgam of Twisted Metal 1, 2 and Rogue Trip (same developers, new name), this is it.

Garycon 2026 – Musings!

It’s been three years since I’ve been at the best con there is: GARYCON. This con has three big things going for it (maybe more):

  1. The Grand Geneva Resort. Intimate setting, cannot be a huge convention, drinks flowing constantly so you can get shitfaced from arrival to departure, every day of the Con. Food is plentiful and the restaurants and food service is really great. The staff will do stuff for you (like set up more tables in nooks and crannies). Tip them well and your random gaming table in the corner of some dark area will have a waiter the whole night. NO OTHER CON HAS ANYTHING LIKE THIS. It’s also very scenic.
  2. RPG, OSR and bespoke game focus. I saw Star Frontiers, Top Secret, FASERIP, and the ORIGINAL version of BOOT HILL played as well as dozens of tables of AD&D. DCC is there in FORCE as well, Hackmaster, OSRIC, everything OSR. Why Lamentations of the Flame Princess doesn’t make a showing at this con I have no idea. Also tons of games from ye olden days that people made their own pimped out copies of: a huge Kingmaker board, massive wooden board for TSR’s Knights of Camelot, massive Dawn Patrol table. All of this is super awesome to see.
  3. Cool little town nearby. Grand Geneva is across the expressway in a wilderness/farm region next to Lake Geneva, it’s technically within walking distance of the downtown BUT NOT IN MARCH. This has two positive effects, one, the town is far enough away that everyone stays at the Con for dinner and getting drunk AND if people want some night life outside of the Grand Geneva, there are tons of excellent bars and restaurants a short ride away. Being a town with the highest per-capita net worth in most, if not all, of the midwest helps as the quality of the places you can to is way higher than any town of this size. You can also stay in a hotel not far from the convention and get a bus/shuttle to the Grand Geneva to save money (even with record crowds at the con, there were still vacancies as March is between ski season and boating season so it’s a tourism dead zone).

Alright, here’s some shit I saw and played. I got to the con about 1PM Friday and just wandered around mostly as everyone else was in games or still working like chumps! The coolest thing I saw that day was the shrine to Dave Trampier with tons of his old stuff to look at, including original pages of Wormy, two hand drawn TITAN playtest boards, and lots of old artwork prints. I found a copy of Dragon #77 at the Noble Knight booth and added it to the collection there (has King of the Tabletop in it). I got a personal tour of the exhibit from Tramp’s sister and it was pretty eye opening. There were letters where he was trying to get people to fund a WORMY compendium, but it didn’t go through. That needs to happen someday, somehow. Friday night we went out to the steakhouse there and started heavily drinking and the night was over (most people had gotten there after work and were pretty beat down already before the booze).

Saturday I just had one game I had signed up for, the LEGO mech game, Mobile Frame Zero. There were a lot of kids there and the guy running it was a bit slow to start– by the time we got to the first turn’s activations, my buddy pinged me that there was a seat at the GIANT KINGMAKER TABLE and so I booked it over there to play that instead. That was great fun despite the fact that I had the weakest starting faction in the game and could only buddy up with people to do anything. The lady running it was the second generation ‘runner’ of this game and she did an amazing job of wrangling these cats.

I had to go to a funeral nearby that took a chunk of hours out of the con, but when I got back I got into a horror RPG called VAESEN. The scenario was investigating a string of crazy murders in Prague and we were nearly all killed, but pulled it off in the end (not going to put in any spoilers as I think this is a game module that others may play). It used a D6 attribute+skill system like Tenra Bansho Zero which was pretty good BUT for something like this I would still go for CoC with friends and INTO THE ODD at a convention. Last game of the day was going to be Warrior Knights (haha!) but it go to late so we played Shadow Moon Syndicate instead, which was fine but too much like Ethnos for my tastes.

All in all, a fantastic weekend that I really didn’t plan out enough, next year, if I can make it, I need to run an event or two.

1985 Warrior Knights – don’t sleep on this one bros

Why do we play board games? It’s a question I’ve rarely asked myself or group as it’s been so ingrained in my hobby time that it really needs no answer at this point other than “because we do.” Yet, I think the WHY is all about creating the dynamics of conflict within an explorable system that is outside the realm of any real conflict. Of course, Cormac McCarthy put it better in the words of the Judge:

“Men are born for games, nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself, but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents, and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principles and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth, all games aspire to the condition of war, for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.”

Yet a lot of games these days aren’t about conflict at all, they are more like a knitting circle where people sit around for awhile and then show what they made (I did not make this up, there’s a meme around that I got this from). Root and other games like it pushed against this trend hard, but for a long time, there were tons of games with actual ‘dudes on a map’ conflict. With that, let’s talk about Derek Carver’s 1985 classic Warrior Knights, later redeveloped completely by Fantasy Flight into their version. Both are good representations of design ideals of their time (1980s, early 2000’s respectively), the 1985 game especially so.

To start with, I have huge respect for Carver who has given several telling interviews about his design process. He simply made games and played then every week at his house with friends. Games like the ones he wanted to play did not exist (1970’s and 1980’s), so he just went and made them, not to fill a gap in published games (like area-control deck builders after deck-builders were a thing) but just to play. People that came to his house spread the word about some of these games (like Durance Vile which later became GW’s Dr. Who and if I was to guess, influenced Dungeonquest and Talisman in no small way) and some of these folks were at Games Workshop and asked to publish them. Carver did not make games to shoot out the door for publishing and hit some market, he just invented games and played them– a lot. It wasn’t playtesting, it was just play. This is quite a difference from what happens when I go to protospeil events or playtest with friends to the point where personally I will never ask anyone again ‘do you want to playtest a game for me’ but rather ‘would you like to play a game I made?’

After a long time of owning the game (almost 8 years!) I was on a Warrior Knights kick (the Fantasy Flight version) and wanted to do a comparison, so I dragged out Carver’s Warrior Knights and I was shocked even while learning the rules: the game is the absolute antithesis of modern board game design with the following aspects that HORRIFY modern gamers:

  • very long (3+ hours) with an emphasis on the +.
  • potential player elimination (people can come back, but they are weakened badly)
  • insanely random events that can wreck not just the leader, but any of the players, which cannot be avoided when they happen
  • A political phase with tons of negotiation that is central to player advancement /victory in the game
  • Stealing cards from other players both via voting and on the battlefield
  • Requires pencil and paper for various things in the game
  • Has a combat CRT using a single D6
  • You can trade money and cards back and forth between players at any time

What was amazing is that despite everything listed above, everyone had a total blast. The rollercoaster this game generates is absolutely insane. For example, I sent my noble with the biggest army I had to Acre to do a little crusading for cash. All was going well and the siege of Acre was well underway. An event showed up that targeted my noble, but I though ho ho! he’s outside the normal map, but as it turns out, a peasant that noble had somehow offended had snuck onto one of the ships and murdered him in revenge, dissolving my biggest army in an instant. My only benefit was to be able to use that as a wedge to get people to attack someone other than me, or help me with votes in the Assemble. Broken-wing style players can constantly complain about bad events they got to get sympathy votes politically, and people to ease up on them in military conflict, people can sneak in stronghold attacks on unsuspecting players, players can be voted off the island in the Assembly phase and watch while their barony is schralped out by vulture players.

Warrior Knights in action.

This version of the game accomplishes this with few rules, and what rules there are, are usually quite simple. It is absolutely possible to pick up the rules in the first turn of the game and have a decent chance of winning against experienced players because like few other games of this depth, the rules get out of the player’s way so they know what their choices mean.

A few weeks later, I got a 5 player game and while longer, it was also really quite excellent, though one of the players’ goals was to end the game as quickly as possible so went around and razed as many cities as possible to reduce the win conditions. This reduced incomes to a trickle, forcing the massive legions of the mid game to dwindle to shells of armies.

So this is definitely going into rotation and I am amazed there isn’t a modernized (components, cards, board) version out there of this.

I should have bought this in the late 1980’s or at the latest 1990’s and played, a lot. I blame the entire state of Florida for this oversight on my part.

Films of the ski trip – 2026

I haven’t done one of these in a long while, mostly because there hasn’t been a deluge of insane films watched during a trip like THIS ONE back in ye olden days. This past week though, due to the beatings suffered on the mountains of Revelstoke, people did some lying about more than usual and watched amazing and terrible things.

Hearts and Armor
Rating: B-

This is a strange Italian film about a woman who has her fortune told (showing the outcome of the film right at the beginning) who is then nearly gang-raped in a gorge by degenerate rogues– only saved at the last moment by an empty suit of armor which is then bequeathed to her. A scene later she (in the armor) saves another woman from being raped by the same gang of degenerates (now less able to rape after being mangled by the original suit of armor). The woman she saves turns out to be a princess of the Moors, who she then captures and brings to a group of Christian Knights. The remainder of the film is a love story between a Moorish knight and the woman in the armor, and the princess and some other knight– all the while the various knights are fighting each other. This could have been way better but basically when you see the stupid helmets and armor (to tell the knights apart rather than JUST USING LIVERY), you can tell what sort of film this really is: schlock. Despite that, I have a soft spot for this film, mostly because of the comical attempted rape scenes, three very hot chicks, and the one on one battles are actually not that bad. Apparently this film is a cut version of a 4 hour mini-series which explains the number of characters and strange plotlines that come out of nowhere. This has Tanya Roberts (from Beastmaster) and Barbara De Rossi (hot). This is watchable on VHS and Youtube– I would love to see this one restored at some point as the quality is obviously horrible.

Prisoners of the Lost Universe
Rating: C

This film has John Saxon, Apollo from Battle Star Galactica and Kay Lenz (from Breezy and other movies). This is a VERY 1970’s style movie with the outdoor sets looking very much the same as something out of Buck Rogers or even some of the Kroft Supershow programs (dune buggy, etc.). This was not terrible, but seemed almost like a made for TV film from 1978/79– yet came out in 1983!!!! Was this filmed in the 70’s and only released many years later?

Phantom Empire
Rating: D+

This is an insane Journey to the Center of the Earth style romp with extremely low budget effects likely filmed in the same areas as the movie above. This was painful to watch until suddenly a tesla-truck looking future vehicle shows up and the film’s space cleavage steps out. Despite the space-lady and savage women in animal skin bikinis, this was nearly unwatchable. What an incredible waste of an awesome film title though. How this came out in 1988 and not 1978 I have no idea.

Beastmaster
Rating: A-

This is a fantastic movie with an odd choice for lead actor (Marc Singer) in the same way that the 80’s Flash Gordon remake had quite the non-Flash Gordon actor. Overall I feel this film is a timeless classic despite being incredibly cheesy and just slightly edging into the fantasy schlock region. I may watch the Deathstalker movies more often, but I won’t say no to this one. This was by far the best film we watched.

Conquest
Rating: C-

I cannot recommend this film on a general level as it’s just to discordant and makes very little sense at times. The costumes are ridiculous, the battles preposterous and the main villain (who is naked in every scene) had so little screen time, I’m shocked she is always on the cover of the VHS box. However, it has a certain schlocky charm to it that if you are really hunting for a strange sword and sorcery film, this is probably a good choice.

Risque
Rating: D+

This was the only modern film we watched on the trip, I have no idea who put it on but it was a nonsense larceny caper surrounding a strip club planned and pulled off by a bartender an…a group of strippers. There is a lot of nudity and it had some promise until a scene where the bartender was randomly killed on accident by one of the strippers while he was training them to wield guns. The entire film from that point on became utterly preposterous and most of the plot threads that had been built up to that point became 100% irrelevant. The set up had the potential for a great finish of the film but it was completely wasted as if the writers just got lazy and decided to take the easiest way out. Silvia Orduna is the biggest draw of the strippers by far, but that was nowhere near enough.

The Last Dragon
Rating: B

I have often said that 1985 was the absolute zenith of American pop culture and film and it’s been downhill ever since–yet this film, which I never saw as a kid nor remembered seeing the trailer for, completely calls this into question. If you liked Miami Connection, this is the NYC counterpart. Strange pacing, uneven acting, disturbing and random placement of music videos from years earlier as if to simply increase screen time?? This is hard to rate as it’s a cultural gulash of Afro-American (emphasis on the afro) and Chinese stereotypes and cultural appropriation that would be considered totally inappropriate to put on film these days. In one critical scene, some boom-box carrying Chinese fortune cookie factory workers force the “Dragon” character who is obsessed with Chinese Kung Fu/culture to teach them to play craps, which he does not know how to play and just makes up the rules. ALL the characters make fun of each-other’s ethnicity which is a bit of a breath of fresh air since we are still under the thumb of political correctness. As bad as this is, it’s still entertaining.

Painting the Black Talons for Warcry

I’m a big Warcry fan. It scratches that skirmish itch and does not over stay it’s welcome at the table during individual games (looking at you Mordheim and also you Necromunda!). I’ve played a lot of one-offs over the years and in early 2025 I was intro-ing the game with the intent of playing a campaign with a group of semi new players. during this time I decided to get my brother the Blackthorns for his birthday and give them a solid go with painting. This started off well, with two of the miniatures done right around his birthday last March…. then I got the Epic 40K bug and totally shifted gears for a bit there, not getting back to them until DECEMBER of last year. I finally cranked the last one out two weeks ago and it was a journey worth remembering as these are some beasts to paint, and stretched my skill-set to say the least. I am a notoriously slow painter so I feel if I had them done by late Summer, it would have been OK….January 2026? This was not ok.

Stock paint jobs, these guys are mostly painted with gold armor on the box, but I did not want to go that route as it was just TOO FRIGGIN GOLD. Looking at the othher Sigmarines for inspiration, I happened upon an article in White Dwarf issue 502 (a really good issue for paint advice/tips as it goes through their typology of notation going forward for Paint Splatter articles) and in the back it has a beautiful mix of steel and gold armor for Sigmarines. This would be my start. I did a test model of a random sigmarine I had lying around (no idea where it came from) and it turned out super solid. I was quite nervous about messing the Blacktalons up, so this was a critical step.

The Black Talon kit was pretty easy to put together, but I had to decide on helmets or not for all but the elf-lady and I went with no helmets except for Neave who I wanted to look like an emotionless Sigmarine out of the bunch. There isn’t a lot of skin on these guys, so the heads have to look great as they are big focus of the miniatures above all that metal. Rostus and Henrick (the two big dudes) were fairly easy to paint skin- wise, but Rostus is one of TWO bald members of this troop and that’s never easy. Shakana, the crossbow lady, has brown skin and that is the easiest ever to paint and make look good. I’m going to talk about Lorai (the elf) separate.

Metal wise it was Iron hands steel with a wash of nuln oil, hightlighted with ironbreaker, but with a glaze highlight (super thin layer) and when that dries you do a recess wash of drakenhof nightshade and then a final edge highlight of stormhost silver. I did a few scratches in the armor, but since these guys were super badass, I left it mostly alone. The Gold was Retributor Armor with a Reikland fleshshade wash highlighed liberator gold and then a Gore-grunta fur wash, then edged with stormhost silver. I overdid the edging a few times and had to clean it up. Overall both of these recipes worked great for the superheroic models these are, that would never let their armor get dirty.

The rest of the model was just picking out details for the armored guys, but there were two parts to these that I struggled with– the ENTIRE elf lady (Lorai) and the Shakana’s bird. Paint recipe wise I pondered these for way too long (weeks of procrastination) before diving in. The biggest issue with the elf lady is that her skin has to be perfectly smooth AND she has a bald head– no hair at all, totally bald. This along with very delicate armor and weapons and it was no wonder she took the longest by far. Shakana’s bird ended up being super easy, just selecting three different colors of blue and breaking those out into three colors (base layer, highlight, very highlight).

These models have molded bases that have a bunch of stuff on them. I’m not a huge fan of this but it suits these models. Again the base on Lorai was like painting another model though with the tree, mushrooms, water and these weird floating fish things flying around her feet. All of those things needed recipes of highlights, washes and shades and that took awhile. I pondered for several days on what to make the floating fish look like, and how to achieve the shiny water effect on the pond with what browns to use to make it look like muck. I pulled it off but it took way too long navel gazing.

There was one major modelling issue with Neave as she had a horrific gap in her fur cape that had to be filled with greenstuff. Mostly putting these together was a snap (except for Lorai… of course) but it was frustrating to have to fill that large of a gap.

Overall, highly recommended the Black Talons as a kit– these look incredible when painted and I think they redeem the silly looking original Sigmarines. They are absolute terrors on the Warcry table as well.

2025 In review!

This year was not bad, but man I had a struggle hobby-wise from what my plan was to what the reality ended up being. I started off the year really wanting to play Warcry and do a campaign, so I painted a lot, made some plans for some intro games for new players who also got warbands and painted them, I painted terrain, etc. and was ready to go. We had a session last January (almost exactly a year ago) and there was passion for the project. February is rough for miniature gaming due to snowboarding as much as possible (it’s the month with consistent snow more than any other here) but in March I was determined to get Warcry rolling– even getting my brother the Blacktalons set which I promised to paint for him, and that’s when it all went to shit! I am a slow painter and I told the guys that I wanted to make sure I had his stuff painted before we started playing a campaign… and guess what is still sitting on my painting table: the last two Blacktalons miniatures. Why you ask? I got the Epic 40K bug. I was looking at some of my old gaming books and came upon my Warmaster core book. Reading through it I was thinking: man it would be cool to play this someday and looked around if I had some stuff. I do not but during that search I found my old Epic 40K and Space Marine 2 miniatures and rules and that became an absolute obsession. I immediately started painting up the Mentor Legion (at a good pace too) and convinced folks to play a game in July. I happened upon a massive Tyranid army (painted) and bought that with $$ from my second job. This tossed Warcry (and painting them) to the side.

So this year of our lord 2025, was ALL about Epic 40K for me, which I had a feeling in 2013 was the best Epic ruleset and now after two HUGE games last year, I am 100% convinced that the 1997 rules for Epic are not only the best for 6-10mm gaming in the 40K universe, but one of the best rulesets that GW has come up with. I again wish I had played this when it came out…

Board Games

We have played far less board games this past year than normal, but we still got a lot in. My favorite for this year is unexpectedly TOWNSFOLK TUSSLE. I saw a post on twitter of the “Bort’s Face” card and needed to find out what that was from. I fell in love with the rubberhose artwork and completely dastardly take on a boss battler. I even pimped out my set and got the miniatures painted which you MUST do if you own this game. They are really easy and fast to paint (though I had other projects at the time– see above).

Other than Tussle, I got in some games of Fantasy Flight’s Warrior Knights, which is a fun romp and way better than I originally thought.

Last but not least, we played a LOT of Arcs Blighted Reach. Instant classic and while with the departure of Cole Wherle from Leder games the future of the game is in doubt for expansions (likely won’t be any if I was a betting man), Blighted Reach is an undeniable insta-classic 4X space game and really doesn’t need anything else. This is WITH the expansion, not just the base Arcs game, which isn’t worth bothering with even as a tutorial for the real game.

RPG’s!

This year I ONLY ran Dungeon Crawl Classics, and my kids game (not little kids any more!) is going strong about once per month and I ran a game on the ski trip as well. I’ve got a lot of RPG books and games and looking at what I have and what I actually play, I really need to do a massive culling.

That said, this year I’m looking to start a WFRP campaign but using Mythras (none of the WFRP rulesets are all that great, including 2nd edition compared to Mythras). We’ll see if that kicks off.

Video Games

Arc Raiders for me came out of nowhere and snagged my game of the year 100%, but many months of last year were spent finishing Jagged Alliance 3 and another sleeper hit with me was E-Sports Godfather, a MOBA management game that should not be missed. As soon as I can get off Arc Raiders, AND if I can stay away from Crusader Kings 3, I will be getting back on that one.

Music

I listed to a LOT of Snow Strippers this year and I think they are fantastic. Everything is so glitchy and insane and yet (not that I dance or anything) danceable. BUT about as far from electronica as you can get, my favorite track for the year is this:

What I’m looking forward to…

First off is the Invincible RPG which looks like an updated version of FASERIP. I think I may get my kids group to try this out for a session or two. I’m seeing a lot of Arc Raiders in my future as that game continues to deliver.

Hottest chick on the Planet

I really don’t know, really haven’t been paying attention BUT I did notice that Bagnol, the hottest chick on the planet many years running, had a kid, so for 2025, we’ll give her a rest and hand it to Nicola Cavanis.

Arc Raiders – Easily GOTY 2025!

If you told me in the summer I would have 100 hours into a looter-shooter by the end of 2025, I would have bet you $100 and a slap across the mouth that there was now way that was even remotely possible. AND…. here we are, with not only playing a ton, but got enough garbage in my stash to do the first season reset and get a modest bonus. This game is a fucking miracle. Design-wise it’s very similar to how Fortnite came about, as it started as a Big Boss Battler FPS and then morphed during playtesting into the boss battler looter shooter that it is now. Fortnite started as a rather lame FPS zombie tower defense and morphed into the PUBG-killer for little kids that became a global juggernaut.

There are so many games out there that try to find the secret sauce like this and I think I have an answer for why this one, PUBG, and FORTNITE hit so hard: CHAOS and CREATIVE PLAY. All three of these games are tight FPS games, and all three allow the player to come into a game with a plan that is totally different from any other player’s plan, and likely very different from what they did the round before as well. Hel, my first Fortnite win I just hid in a bush and back shot the last guy after he took out the third last guy… other times I dropped into hot zones to fight it out to get the best loot before the mid-game. There are tons of strange tactical plays in Arc Raiders, from setting up elaborate traps, gargoyling, to a hardcore run and gun PVP, to an Arc slayer to someone that runs onto maps with ZERO equipment and rolls the dice. All of them are somehow both viable and totally not viable in various situations. People gear up with a plan and the game answers with things you could not have foreseen happening, like spawning into and area with a rocketeer right there, or a leaper dropping into the building right next to you between you and the extract, or ALL the crazy stuff real people try to do to and for other players. What’s more, you can absolutely contribute to this chaos for great effect on a round. See someone with a Stitcher (and anti raider weapon) running around shooting people into the ground? Lure Grenade him to draw the Arcs in that he cannot hope to even damage. Having trouble aiming? set up massive traps in common areas and pick up the loot later. Want to help people? Set up ziplines so they can traverse the map in a jiffy, or heal them up (when they don’t shoot you). I think the combination of the chaos of a round and that you get such a wide breadth of choice in terms of how to approach it are what make Fortnite, PubG and Arc Raiders top of the pops.

Aesthetic

Arc Raiders is a trash-collection game and it’s aesthetics support this throughout, the raiders and Speranza denizens wear a variety of cast off gear and clothing, most of which is straight out of late 1960’s and early 70’s sci fi films. In contrast, the Arc robots (?) are ultra modern looking and mirror something that would be designed along the same lines today. This is a huge draw for the game as it just looks great throughout.

Sound design

The belle of the ball by far in Arc Raiders is the sound design. The importance of sound, sound recognition and being able to tell what is happening locally as well as on the larger maps themselves throughout the trash collection is essential to what makes AR fun as hell. You will know immediately on a map if players have engaged a matriarch or rocketeer, or if you haven’t checked the clock, that you are now down to 10, 5 or 2 minutes left based on sounds on the map. Locally, other raiders make sounds doing anything and everything and one of the biggest areas of learning the game /experience is what those sounds mean (and what to do about it). It’s hard to describe without experiencing it how important sound is to the entire Arcs experience, but it is phenomenal.

Here is an example during the first week of play dealing with a single rocketeer without the correct weapons, and having no idea what to do…

With fighting raiders, it’s really a crazy mess when people get stuck in, and usually when the adrenaline is pumping, stupid choices are made that lead to failures. An example of three such ‘events’ below.

When it comes down to it, Arc Raiders just delivers what gamers want, a playground of chaos and insanity that can be avoided by not taking risks and playing super safe, or leaned into by jumping on stella montis with ZERO equipment except a couple of smoke grenades. Totally game of the year.