So, bar my last post you may have noticed I have not been posting much lately (and if you haven’t noticed then how dare you not!! I jest of course). Being honest my mental health has not been, and continues not to be. the best this last two months. Am not going to go into detail and it is nothing dangerous etc but coupled with work being insanely busy for a prolonged period I have simply not had the desire to do much of anything other than eat and sleep. I have also stepped away from social media almost entirely as I was fed up with the constant drama on there in the hobby community; it was becoming near constant backbiting for clout and cheap point scoring which is not for me. Finally, I have taken an ignorance is bliss approach to life by cutting out mainstream news pretty much entirely as the levels of scaremongering, bias and hyperbole have become ridiculous. I well understand exaggeration for effect but the news at the moment feels more like a script writer for a disaster movie and for me that is not what the news should be.
So as a result I have very slowly been rebuilding my mental shields though they are still pretty flimsy and as a result have been taking a look around all my geekdom areas to see what has been going on.
40k
I can see now that Squats/LoV have been released and were pretty much broken on release. I confess that I was initially interested in them when they were first announced but the design aesthetic of them pretty much put me off. I see though that GW have released yet another overpowered army and needed to make an amendment to the wording in the codex in pretty much the first week of release. Clearly they have learned from the Iron Hands debacle in eighth edition. Indeed it seems to have been so bad that some tournaments outright banned the army pending an FAQ and that is frankly a ridiculous state of affairs. I dislike being down on GW but the current edition is a complete and utterly broken mess with the power creep. I play necrons and I look at the stats for each new release and absolutely roll my eyes because I wonder just how GW are playtesting the game. I hold the opinion that they are just testing against the last army released because the balance has completely and utterly gone. I will write another blog on how I think they can fix things but that requires a new edition to work.
Due to not liking the design I completely skipped LoV and also the new kill team box sets. Whilst I liked the breacher team I have never been a fan of kroot and the sheer volume of terrain, which I hate painting put me off. The new necron box caught my eye until I saw that it was the existing cryptek model and a slightly rebased version of the existing deathmark kit and the apprentice cryptek who just looks like a kit bash. As a result this set is a hard pass for me again as it just feels that GW are recycling low use kits into kill team right now.
In the spirit of balance I note that the next round of campaign books will not contain model rules. This has been sold as ‘listening to feedback’ though the cynic in me makes me suspect that other factors may have crept into the decision. I do however think it is the correct decision as rules should only be in the codex or FAQ and not in campaign books. They should be lore, scenarios and stratagems only rather than forcing players to run around with multiple books just to have their army rules. This is certainly a welcome development and credit should be given where it is due.
I have to say though that I am falling out of love with the hobby again. The monumental power creep is insane and given that for me a trip to my closest gaming centre is around a ninety minute round trip it is just not worth me playing. The social element is fine but getting constantly tabled just doesn’t appeal. As a result I have put my painting on hiatus for a bit though I did get a couple of models done this last few weeks from the Imperium magazine. To be honest all my painting is pretty much on hiatus though I did also finish off this beast of a 3d print after some seventy hours of work but I think it will be a few weeks if not longer before I pick up a brush again.
Gaming
So I have not really done much gaming either this last two months. I did finish Nights of Azure 2 but only with the one ending as it became really dull and repetative which was a shame because the game had a great vibe and aesthetic. I have the full review in draft but haven’t yet gotten around to posting it. I think I will probably be picking up an RTS game for a bit as there is nothing really calling to me on the JRPG front at the moment. I started Ryza 2 but I want to save that for my week off next month and I am not totally sold on Bayonetta 3 but will see.
So not much going on but hopefully I can be a bit more active this next few weeks.
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