Scoob and I were playing this game on and off for the latter half of last year, but we hadn't touched it since the Christmas holiday. A bit daft, seeing as all we had left to do was defeat the end boss.

With just 9 days left until the anniversary of when we started playing it, we finally decided to get our shit together and tick it off the list.

This game is Dragon's Crown, a side scrolling fantasy beat 'em up, kind-of like an updated Golden Axe. And as such, it didn't have to try that hard to get our attention.

Scoob went with the Amazon, I'm guessing because he has a thing for axes.
I went with the Sorceress, and named her Sarah, after Miss Fortune from League Of Legends. I'm pretty sure there were a couple of big reasons for this, but I just can't remember exactly what they were right now. I mean, it's been a year since we started playing the game, after all.

Then off we set into the various dungeons in order to beat a whole range of bosses, which would allow us to open a portal and fight the game's end boss: the Ancient Dragon.

Scoob and I are both fans of this kind of game, and I'm pretty sure we both enjoyed it. Well, I know I did, for the most part. This is despite me never feeling like I had a full grasp of the gameplay, probably a side-effect of us having these huge gaps between each play session.

I mean, whenever we came back to it I was constantly struggling to remember exactly what buttons did what, and often ended up using the wrong skill, or wasting my protection spells for example.

This was certainly not the fault of the game, though it was a shame it went down this way. It could have done with us being way more organised and playing it properly, as the game's genre and style are both things I enjoyed.

As I often do, I had elected to use the main support/healing character of those available, which meant I often felt like I was not contributing enough in fights. And it's not like the sorceress can't kick out damage, because she can. There's a huge lightning attack she can do that I often thought was doing the most damage of any or our combined attacks. However, after just two uses, I would be out of mana and would have to get it recharged.

Again, this is not the fault of the game, as I just never played it consistently enough to get my gameplay down properly.

In fact, I think there were only two real issues I had with the game.

Firstly, I hated the loot mechanics. Every time your party comes back to town, you have to get your loot appraised so you know what it is and whether it's better or worse than what you've already got. Thing is, the list of loot can be huge, and they all have to be appraised one at a time. I just found this process really tedious.

Secondly, I didn't think the camera moved very naturally. It made it awkward to activate runes or hunt for loot when the camera was lurching around all over the place.

One thing that a lot of people had an issue with on launch back in 2013, which we certainly did not have a problem with, was the art style. In fact we thought the game looked pretty cool, even the wildly exaggerated characters. Look, it's a computer game, and a fantasy one at that, filled with magic and dragons, and I think heavily influenced by Golden Axe and Conan. Of course the dudes were gonna be fucking enormous and the women have ludicrously large assets. What did people expect?
Weirdos.

Besides Rebirth, I really haven't been motivated to play games that much recently, so it was good to get the fingers and thumbs busy again. In addition, I haven't finished a PC game since Resident Evil 4 in January last year. I really need to get on that.

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A couple of weeks back, I got to play Gang Beasts again for a second proper try.

This time, it was my mates Dave and Craig that entered the arena with me. Much like last time, we beat each other up a few times to get used to the controls, before heading into some wave battles.

As we were playing this around midnight, after several alcoholic beverages, our attempts to reign supreme seemed destined to fail. It also didn't help that there were only three of us, when it took four of us several attempts to get the win during the last play session of this game.

But still, the lads seemed to enjoy its silliness. So we can't argue with that.

There's been a considerable amount of dice rolling going on recently.

Up first was an absolute mammoth game of Risk: Game Of Thrones, which consisted of 7 players, meaning we needed to use the 2nd map as well.

While this was not our first game using both maps, the first game only went a few turns as we were limited on time.

Unfortunately, we were not able to fully finish this game either, but it lasted a lot longer at four hours.

The game started pretty well balanced, with everyone receiving 5 armies per turn except the reds who were picking up 6.

A few players quickly picked areas of the map to focus on, but some of us were too spread out to really get a foothold anywhere.

I spent most of the game trying in vain to take the Andalos region with my little green dudes, a task I only completed about 2 turns before the end of the game. This was because I finally managed to bring in reinforcements from cards for the first time in the game, so few attacks did I succeed in.

Then disaster struck. As it was getting way too late, rather than wait for the Valar Morghulis card, we instead set a turn limit. This meant we all knew exactly when things were going to end, and so everyone got very aggressive. It also allowed the reds, who were dead last in turn order, complete freedom to attack with impunity, and they stomped through my hard fought Andalos in huge numbers, and pretty much wiped me from the game.

Final score

Red: 34, Orange: 27, Blue: 26, Yellow: 20, Black: 13, White: 12, Green: 7.

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A game that didn't get a look in all last year, despite me working like a dog on it throughout 2022, was Super Dungeon Explore.

While I'd got (a little) time, I dug out the rules and set up a solo game with 4 heroes.

Like every time I try and make new rules, there are always some good things and some bad.

One of the good things was that I think it only took 7 turns to complete the first level. As I want the game to be snappy and quick, this should have seemed like good news.

However, playing it still felt way too long. Yes, a lot of my time was spent re-reading the rules to remember exactly what I had written, but still.

Unfortunately, I was too busy to finish the run before needing to set up the tables for some 40K action, so didn't progress beyond level 1.

Still, the basic gameplay seemed way better than my earlier efforts. But if it's going to take hours to finish a 4 level game with 4 players, what will be the point?

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Over the past couple of years, we've played a few games of some new Epic rules I've been working on for a while. Throughout this time, we had wondered whether these rules could be modified for use in 40K.

Well, as there was only one way to find out, I finally managed to get a rough ruleset written out, with some basic rules for Orks, Space Marines and Tyranids. I'm classing this ruleset as a 2nd version of 40K-S, which was a game Scoob and I tried to create about a decade ago.

A little while back, Scoob and I took these rules to the tabletop, controlling the Orks and Tyranids respectively, and played a couple of games.

The first game saw us play with 3 detachments of 700pts each, and the 2nd game saw us step it up a bit with 3 detachments of 1000pts each.

Unsurprisingly from my perspective, both games ended similarly with comfortable wins for the Orks.

The first game was an absolute spanking, with a score of 1643 to 330, while the other game was at least a bit closer with 1324 to 952.

Not that these scores really mean anything, as we have no idea if the points values are anywhere near correct. In addition, there are still a bunch of things missing from the game, like psychic powers, which really didn't help the 'Nidz.

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More than three years after I played through this game using the solo variant, I finally managed to get it to the tabletop so that other people could have a crack at it.

This time, I would be playing the role of "The Chisel", as the other players went back in time to 1940s L.A. to hunt some murderers in Detective: City Of Angels.

My task for this game would be to respond as the players questioned the suspects, and hand out information if they found anything during their searches.

Technically, it's possible for the Chisel to win the game if they can mess with the Detectives enough so that they can not solve the case. However, I informed the other players beforehand that this was not going to be the way I was going to play it. Instead, I wanted to try and keep the game as close as possible, mostly messing with players who I thought were doing better.

In addition to this, as I got a bit more used to playing the Chisel role, I also started to mess with players a little if I thought they were on the right track with their questioning, while not really hampering their efforts if they seemed to be barking up the wrong tree. Whether or not the players picked up on this tactic I do not know. Though if they actually read my website, they may know this for the future.

By the end of the first case, none of the players were able to find the solution, as they all missed some vital info about how the victim got shot, which may have led them down the correct path.

We went straight into the 2nd case, as it pretty much follows on from the first. This time, the players were much more on it, and Gareth solved correctly with 2 days left. As he did this, both of the other players revealed their answers, and they had also both pencilled in the correct solution, so either would have won if it was their turn next.

At the end of the day, I was happy that I was managing to keep them all quite close together in terms of information.

In the tabletop hobby, there aren't many things I hate having to do more than painting. However, stripping old paint is certainly one of those things. I think I would prefer to paint all of my armies twice over than to go through much more of this stripping nonsense.

But alas, these models had been waiting patiently to get a darn good strip for over a year, so I thought it was about time it got done.

Into the pot went some Epic Orks, an old Warlord Titan, and the Space Crusade Dreadnought.

After having a couple of good dunks, and after picking at the remaining paint with pins and tweezers, I got them as good as I possibly could.

Up next was the re-assembly, as I really wanted to get them undercoated in a bit of a spraying session that was coming up.

The Warlord and the Dreadnought both needed pinning, as some parts were snapped on their original joints. Typically, once this was all done, I stumbled upon the plasma gun for the Dreadnought in a random bits box. Though this was discovered too late for the stripping, I think it might be ok if I use its original paint as an undercoat, and go over it with somewhat similar colours.

In the spraying session, I got to use some new Colour Forge sprays for the first time. I fucking love these, at least as much as I have used them so far. The matt varnish in particular was very good, and really brought all that Callidus Assassin shininess back under control.

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I figured while I'd got the models out to varnish them, I may as well grab some piccies.

Some of these have waited several years for their photo op, so it's about time I did it.

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I've got upcoming plans to try and make my own wargaming boards at long last. To help me out with this, I ordered some plaster so that I could make my own modelling compound.

But what did I find when I opened the box?

Yep, that's a damn good split, and clearing all that powder up is not going to be fun. I also need to find some other container to put it in.

Thanks, Amazon.

Near the end of February, I finally got my butt in gear and started the task of finishing my Commissars. I had actually started these about 4 years ago after sorting out my other Guard characters, but as usual, my painting motivation fell off a cliff, and it's taken this long to get back to them.

Even this time, it's taken all these extra weeks to get the final details done, as an enormous Final Fantasy VII-shaped distraction landed in my lap.

In addition to the other two Commissars, I decided to give my old Yarrick model an almost totally new coat of paint over its old naff attempt, which I am much happier with.

At some point, I may actually take some proper photos of these Guard characters.

Maybe.

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A bit back, we got our first chance to play Viking Raiders, which is quite a small game that has got quite a good reputation on the internet.

We only played one game, and though it's supposed to be quite a quick one, our attempt went on for around two hours. To be fair, very few of the attempted raids actually succeeded, as we continually picked the protection cards.

It also feels so long ago now that I can't actually remember the outcome. I think I must have checked out at some point.

It's something we will no doubt have to try again at some point, but I think we were left a little bemused by our first play.

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I don't really get to play King Of Tokyo all that much, but to be fair, I would always choose the New York version anyway, as there is much more to sink your teeth into in that game.

Still, when the chance comes along, it's always a good idea to take it, as the game can still be rather fun.

We played a couple of games, where I tried my very best to get aggressive, but only ended up with my poor Godzilla wannabe suffering painful deaths for my bravado.

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In our second attempt at 7 Wonders, we stepped up to 4 players. Though one of the players was new (well, I suppose we all still are), he soon picked it up, and we ended up having another close game where we all used very different tactics once again.

As last time, my Sis focused heavily on military, though mixed in some good blue card points. Similarly, I got most of my points from the green cards again, echoing my last attempt, while Craig picked up a massive haul from blue cards. Gareth went more balanced this time, with the most even spread of points, though this seemed to cost him in the end.

As the results were being tallied, nobody was sure who had won, which is something really cool about this game.

I did a bit better than I did last time, but could still only manage second, with my Sis taking her second win.