Wow, this post is a few days late but good news, I got a few games in for the month of November! Thanksgiving presented a bit of a wrinkle with family commitments and just adding to the general chaos of my life but I still managed. So, what did I do?
Well, I discovered a member of the local gang had bought into the new L5R and was excited to play. We managed to meet up twice, learn the game and play. The first was just a beginner game with the suggested Crane and Lion decks. The second time we came with our own constructed decks where I proceeded to see my Unicorn clan get smeared all over the table by a Dragon deck. Note the big tournament reporting so far has shown Unicorn is vastly under represented, hinting at an overall weakness in the current meta - so maybe it wasn't my "fault" although I am sure I contributed to it to some degree. I do have to say, I am very impressed with what FFG has done with the game. Many of the glaring issues (IMO) from the old system have been addressed with this version but it seems maintain a lot of the feel (not necessarily all of it though). Now just have to try to build out from the two of us and maybe find a different clan to play for awhile.
Beyond that, I played a game of Pulp Alley with Mike from the Mini Mayhem blog. He has a very nice scenario set up for the game, of course beautiful miniatures to use, and now even has beautiful terrain to go with it. As my first game of Pulp Alley, it was a positive experience of the game and I liked some of the things it was trying to accomplish via the complications(?) deck. Now Mike just needs to whip up the next scenario in the story arc!
I also tried out Shadespire with one of the locals (the same guy as L5R). That was pretty interesting but left me feeling a little unsatisfied. I'm not sure as to why, but given how quick and smoothly it plays I would be willing to try it again. Not sure I would ever buy in though.
Other than that, I continued to hack away at my latest project. That did seem to suffer a bit during the month as at one point I had only managed 1 hour of painting during a 2 week span. Not good considering other projects seem to be pilling up (Company of Iron, Aristeria, and the neglected remaining Tail Fether minis).
The big question is will I manage to get anything done in the month of December. If Thanksgiving causes such chaos, I can't even describe what Christmas does to my hobby time. At least it is getting cold, which tempts everyone in the family to hunker down inside.
