Greetings. I am Stebloke, and I am a bit strange. This website contains my blog, where you can read about the things I create, the games I play, and any other things I get involved in.

I make this blog mostly because I like to look back on the things I do and feel nostalgic, but also because it keeps me motivated to keep pushing on with my backlog of nerdy little projects and tasks.

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There's been a little rumble of activity on the tabletop these last couple of weeks.

Up first was another game of Sheriff Of Nottingham. After my disastrous effort earlier this year, I decided to be a good little boy this time, and declined to smuggle any naughty things into market. Of course, I got checked a lot, so got paid a lot.

Thankfully, the only time I smuggled in some illicit goods I was not checked.

This led to me getting the joint top score with 146, a much better showing. However, I was still beaten into second place, as Gareth, who had also scored 146, had managed to get more goods to market and so won the tie break.

This was then followed up by a game of Codenames, which we'd not played in quite some time.

I am become cheese

Clue me up

After playing the first adventure in my Unlock! box a few years back, I'd been waiting eagerly for the chance to get back to it.

Nobody at the time really liked that first adventure, as it was all kinds of loopy, and was very awkward to understand, especially as it was our first attempt at this game. But I'd read online that the other two that came in this box were much better.

A few nights back, I popped round Scoob's, and we gave those other two adventures a bash to see if the online discourse was true.

Well, a mixed bag is the only way to describe our evening.

I think we liked the Animal-O-Matic scenario, as it was cool to jump into the bodies of different animals to get different abilities. So while we certainly didn't do very well, it was at least enjoyable.

The last adventure, Around The World In 80 Minutes, had us gnashing our teeth in frustration, much like the very first one we tried a few years ago. I wouldn't say it was as bad as that first one, but it certainly had its share of weird, logic-breaking puzzles that just made us look at each other and ask "What the...?"

Animal-hopping mayhem

That's a serious 20 minutes over time

Trying to get around the world in 80 minutes

This effort also takes us 20 minutes extra

It's been nearly three years now since I renovated my old Super Cup Football game.

I recently found out that the grease I'd used on it, lithium grease, was really not supposed to be used on plastic, and could indeed damage it over time.

To remedy this, I got some silicone grease instead.

Cleaning off the old and replacing it with the new was not a stupendously fun task, but it's done now nonetheless.

Proper good greasing

There have been a few more battles waged across our available boards.

Up first, Gareth challenged me to another game of Epic, which saw us each choosing a 6000pt army.

G took command of the Chaos forces, and selected a smaller, tougher, more elite army, while I went with quite a lot of smaller Eldar units.

Things were pretty even in the first turn, but in the second, one of my detachments got completely minced as the Chaos army charged into close combat.

My long range shooting ended up being largely ineffective, and I couldn't quite take the last wound from several enemy units which would have ended up breaking them.

The game ended after 3 turns, with the score 3999 to G and 2598 to me. Even though the VP target was 4000, it was pretty obvious at that point who the victors were.

The armies line up ready for war

Enemy forces approach each other in the forest

Eldar units try desperately to support their dwindling allies

The first of our two most recent 40K games saw a bit of a Tyranid civil war. Scoob went full on Nidz, while my little bugs mind-frelled some Imperial Guard and brought them along for the ride.

The first turn was pretty good for me, and I made some good rolls. But on the second turn, Scoob did his signature deep strike invasion, and was able to get many charges off. In addition, my rolling luck started to turn sour.

Dropping my own deep striking units for the start of the third turn backfired, when Scoob again got the initiative and was able to intercept my reinforcements. My rolls started to get even worse, such as when 10 Genestealers and the Broodlord attacked Scoob's Psychophage, which at the time only had a single wound remaining, and they somehow couldn't kill it.

This game saw us running out of time, so I had to withdraw. Though it was unlikely I could have clawed my way back into this one, at the end I only needed one wound to wipe the Psychophage, one wound to break the Hive Tyrant, and one wound to break the Norn Emissary, so may have got some good points.

But as it was, it ended 1351 to 1006 in Scoob's favour.

My man of the match was my Officer John Guyman, who Power-Fisted both the Neurolictor and the flying Tyranid Prime out of existence.

That's a lot of bugs

Yet another one of my wonderful rolls

The Hive Tyrant and Gargoyles rain fire as the Genestealers fail to bring down the Psychophage

And our latest game saw some strange allegiances, when I took my Marines and Eldar to face off against Scoob's Space Wolves and Chaos.

In probably our fastest game yet for death and destruction, we both ended up with very little left after four turns.

T'was a shame then that I ended up with the most beat up of the two very beat up armies.

Highlights included yet another successful deep strike by Scoob's Bloodletters, that dropped in to annihilate my Assault Marines and Captain in one stroke. And one of my Dreadnoughts that exploded and took out several of the Blood Claws that had just wrecked it.

Most useless units in the game were my other Dreadnought, that ran backwards and forwards trying to find a suitable target, and Canis Wolfborn, who skulked down the flank and was unable to find any combat.

The game ended 2380 to Scoob and 1923 to me.

The Bloodletters pull off more deep strike shenanigans

The Avatar is mobbed by Marines

The Blood Claws take out a Dreadnought only to have it explode in their faces

So, the final part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake series has been announced.

If, for some bizarre reason, you wish to read about my initial thoughts, click the following button:

Show / hide FF7 ramblings

First things first: the name. I was hoping for Resolution, implying the game's story would finally end, and the conflict between the planet and the people would finally be resolved.

But I can't be too miffed with Revelation. Most people I listened to online seemed to want Final Fantasy VII: Returns, and that to me sounds bloomin' stupid.
Where would it be returning from?

At least Revelation does sound like something interesting might happen. Either we are getting some juicy lore we've never had before, or something big might change. In fact, it's almost like it promises change. Not that I think they've got the guts for something big, but we'll see.

They have at least distanced themselves from the earlier statement that this series could lead back into Advent Children, so some change may indeed be on the cards.

I'm just really hoping that the change, if we get any, does not include any redemption for Sephiroth.

It was actually one of those rare moments where I was able to watch the reveal trailers live, during Summer Game Fest. I have to admit, I felt a bit underwhelmed when it all went down, I think primarily because it all focused on gameplay over story, and I wasn't really getting any answers I wanted.

But as time has passed, after thinking about it, I'd rather not get any story stuff before the game's release. I'd rather get all my answers at the same time, when playing through the game.

There was some uncertainty within me when they said that the environments had changed. Their excuse for this being that the awakening of the WEAPONs has messed stuff up. I just didn't want another game in the series that had another set of completely different maps.

This led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole, and I watched a few Youtube videos about the geography of Rebirth. I discovered my earlier rants about the game's maps, and how zone maps and the world map were so different, did not quite hold all the water I thought they did.

See, I was comparing the zone maps to their entire equivalent areas of the world map. Whereas now I see that the playable zone maps are created from just sections of their respective areas. And if you lay the zone maps on the correct areas, then they are actually quite a close match.

Using the Grasslands for an example, it's possible to see that the playable, in-game area (outlined in yellow), fits into a small section of the entire Grasslands area of the full world map (shown in red).

Just a little piece of the puzzle

This means that the "playable" world map is made up of stitched together little pieces of the full world map. For whatever reason (me being an idiot most likely), I'd never realised this before.

This certainly makes a lot more sense, with how difficult it would be to create a fully realised version of the entire world map.

We've had confirmation about another world map change, which I called out ages ago, in that there will be no Bone Village. Well that was a no brainer, as there's absolutely no reason for it. Hopefully, evidence of it will at least be somewhere in the world, but we just don't have to go there, and nothing will happen there.

I am not happy, however, with the discovery that we will parachute out of the Highwind wherever we go. This just doesn't seem right to me.

Maybe I'll think differently when I see how we actually get back on to the airship, but right now I'd much rather be hearing that we go up and down a ladder.

And fancy having to gather up and re-package those parachutes each time? I wouldn't want that job.

Not sure yet what to think of the FITS system, but I'm pretty sure they've said we can change the character's outfits no matter what job they're doing, so that's cool. Tifa's Advent Children outfit better be in there are last!

Tifa gets some new gear

Outfits are apparently unlockable through mini-games this time, and not important items like before. This is a change I was very much hoping for. Let's just hope the best skins aren't hard mode only.

Speaking of Tifa, they've also announced the slap fight will be in the game. Not sure I like that at all. I'd rather Tifa just kick her in the face and be done with it.

The removal of Chocobo breeding is also a bit of a shame, as this time Piko will instead level up and learn new skills. I get why they've done it, but it's yet another step away from the original, and another step they didn't really have to take.

In terms of the gameplay that I've seen, I'm thinking Red might seriously struggle to get in my party, as both Vincent and Cid look like their combat is fun. Even in Rebirth, Red was my least favourite to use, and now he'll be further down the pecking order. Unless they've tweaked something, or course.

And then to the big reveal at the end of the trailer, which was the new look for Sapphire WEAPON. Overall, I really like the update, with the exception of the face. I think they've changed it too much, and it simply looks too generic, and too far gone from its original design.

At least Ultimate and Ruby are still looking pretty sweet.

Sapphire's new ugly mug

Ultimately, we didn't really learn much about the story or the mysteries, which is good. Let's just hope this continuing long wait is worth it.