Just recently got done going through a simple-looking but very violent game called Party Hard with the Scoob. In this game, you play as a character who loses his shit when a nearby party prevents him from getting to sleep. So to shut them up for good, he heads into the party to stealthily take out all of the attendees. When he's done with that party, he decides to go on the road, and crash parties all across the country to kill everyone at those as well.

Well, that's what seemed to be happening in the game. I couldn't really tell you to be honest, as we skipped all the cutscenes except the first and last ones. The story just didn't interest us at all. We just wanted to kill everyone.

So many games have been released in the last few years that use an older pixel graphics style, and this game is certainly one of them. Truth be told, I'm not a fan of this style, and would much prefer my game graphics to be sharper, cleaner and more modern. Still, at least this blocky style didn't really detract from the gameplay at all, unlike some other games I've tried like Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine.

There were some interesting and sneaky things you could do in this game, like setting traps and using secret entrances, all of which were useful in trying to accomplish your mission without being spotted. But some things didn't make sense. For example, you could throw people from the roof or from a boat in plain sight of other party-goers and they wouldn't care, whereas at all other times if they see anything suspicious they run to call the cops.

Anyway, it was a fun if not spectacular few hours, that finally gets 2018 on the board with a completed game.

Unfortunately I've been really busy the last few months so wargaming activity has slowed down once again. It's not helped that it's been so hot for so long, which always puts me off painting because of how fast the paint dries on the brush.

Anyway, here's what I've managed to do since the last update. Firstly, I got all the epic Storm Tigers sprayed with some old blue spray cans I bought years ago. With a drybrush and a wash they should all look a very similar colour to the ones that are already painted. And if they don't, then screw it. I'm past caring. I just want stuff to get done already.

Something that always bothered me about my epic Khorne army, ever since I finished it back in 2009, was that I really didn't like the way I'd painted the Banelord. I honestly though it looked shit. So I've re-painted all of its armour plating to make it look better and a lot more Khorne-like.

I carried on with the Khorne stuff for a while and worked on matching the new World Eater stands to the old ones, but it was during this phase that I got really bored, and lost some motivation. Urgh, to think I used to prefer painting 6mm models to the 28mm ones. I wish I still felt that way now.

Then back in May, I took a rare trip into a Games Workshop to get some washes, where I was given a Primaris Marine. I never mind being given free stuff, but this now means my 40K Marines are no longer complete. So I'll have to paint that dude before I take all their new photos. Damn it.
I could have easily left him out, but I like the idea of him being a new Captain who doesn't get on all that well with the other leaders of the chapter.

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Fairly recently, I've been on the hunt for some other interesting games we could try in our games nights. The one I'm concentrating on, called Tiefe Taschen (translates to Deep Pockets), is about corrupt politicians and can support up to 8 players, which should suit us well.
I didn't like the look of the official print and play version, so I've made my own version, which also fits the card sleeves I've got bang on. I just need to laminate the tokens and it will be ready for action.

I'm also going to look at printing my own version of Two Rooms & A Boom, but it looks we will need more than 10 players to get the best out of that one. I'm not sure we can manage that. At least not very often.

So this is the 100th computer gaming entry into this blog, and it's been a long six months coming. It's also very much not worth the wait.

I've not really been playing games these last few months, and none at all that need to be completed. This is mostly because I made the decision over Christmas to make this a year more about tabletop games, but also because I got really burned out playing the Witcher 3 for pretty much three months straight late last year.

Instead, I've been dabbling in a couple of online games I've played in the past. One of them, which Scoob and I unsurprisingly started to play again back in March, was League Of Legends. With no other reason to create this update, I was hoping to hit my next 100 ARAM wins to fit in with the century theme of this update.

Alas, it was not to be, as last night I uninstalled the game after a run of three game losses that each had players on my team going AFK. In the last one, it was a 3v5 the entire game. We put up a good fight, all things considered. But we weren't going to win that.
Those three games came at the end of a much larger bad run that saw my team getting out-comped time and time again. There's nothing worse than feeling like there's no way to win because the other team has such better champions. It was even more frustrating as, after a pretty bad run upon rejoining the game, I'd actually been doing quite well for a few weeks and was really starting to stretch my lead. But one win in the last 16 games, through no real fault of my own, has just turned me way off the game.

When I got 100 wins my score was 100-91 (9 ahead). When I got 200 wins my score was 200-181 (19 ahead). When I got 300 wins my score was 300-279 (21 ahead). By the time the new style ARAM started in May, my score was a poor 341-335, just 5 wins ahead. However the new ARAM changed things for a while, and on 24th June I was back up to 25 wins ahead. But then these last couple of weeks have been a nightmare, and I've ended this run on 397-386, just 11 wins ahead. I thought it best to stop there before falling all the way down into negatives.

The match history website no longer works properly, so I can no longer filter my matches by champion or game mode. So this time I can't go through and get stats about my champions unless I count through all the games manually. And sod that.

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The other game I've been playing, though not really a lot, is Star Wars The Old Republic. I got back into this for a few reasons, most of them related to World Of Warcraft. See, back in May, a couple of things happened that really got me nostalgic for my WoW days.

Firstly, a Youtuber I had watched since the WoW Cataclysm beta, named TotalBiscuit, passed away from cancer. That got me thinking about those first vids I watched of his and just looking back at my very short time in that expansion.
Then, another online personality I watch sometimes called Crendor, started to do a challenge in WoW with his mates called the Darkest Dungeon challenge. I watched a few of those streams as they played through the first few dungeons as Alliance characters, and that got me thinking back to my early days as Jack Gooty going through those same dungeons.

At this point, I was hankering for a bit of MMORPG action, but as I still refuse to pay sub fees I decided to re-install TOR instead. This at least made some sense, as I've never hit top level in that game or even completed a single character's storyline.

I've literally just been chilling out in this game. I went back to the planets I raced through last time, being Taris, Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine, before catching up to where I left off in Kreethen's story on Alderaan. And that's pretty much where I'm at right now.

Nothing's really changed in the game, though this time I installed it without BitRaider so I'm having no problems at all logging in.

So following on from the last update I've been working on sorting out some more Epic stuff. Firstly, I took the Banelord I was given 4 years ago, pulled it apart, then started to put it back together again with some spare 6mm and 28mm parts. This titan, which is probably going to look pretty crappy when it's all done, will be devoted to Slaanesh, as that's the only section in the army that does not currently have a Warlord Titan.

I also managed to put together a Blood Axe Ork clan, after finding a few bossy Ork models that needed something to do. For a clan which is supposed to be very organised (well, for Orks at least), they'll actually look the least organised of all my clans, due to the spare models I have available. I've even used some old Stormboyz stands in there as I think their look will suit the clan quite well.
Those old Deff Dreads have been passed around a lot over the years. Looks like I originally planned for them to join the Bad Moonz, but one is painted blue over the yellow so I must have then intended them to be Deathskulls. But now they'll be Blood Axes after all that.

On the painting side, I quickly breezed through painting the Nurgle additions, meaning the disgusting green part of the Chaos force is now all done apart from the varnish. I realised too late that I'd used the wrong green as a base coat, but I think I saved them in the end. Up next is the Khorne stuff, and then I can get spraying and snapping piccies.

And just before I get stuck into the big Epic-S rules re-write, I thought it would make sense to throw up some old pics I found from some of the playtests we did of the beta version 1 rules back in the late 2000s.