I'm going to take a short break from the Wetware story to give you all a general update on how things are at Chez Loxley.
So Monday saw me and my wonderful wife taking our annual 3 day break to London. This is pretty much the highlight of my year and something we both look forward to pretty much all year round.
Monday evening took us on our usual trip to the cinema. In years gone by we have seen a couple of films, first being the Evil Dead remake where at about 3/4 through I had to vacate the cinema and get some air. The film was not too gross out or scary, but it piled the tension & stress on and just never let up, and I knew that if I didn't get out of there then and there I was going to pop. The second year we saw Amazing Spiderman 2 which the wife and I loved, but no one else seemed to.
This year was a more serious film; Child-44 which consisted of a stellar performance from Tom Hardy. It had pretty much everything in it; humour, sadness, tension & action. But because it's a serious film and not the popcorn crap the public apparently love, I'm sure it'll bomb.
Day 2 comprised of a shopping trip into Camden. This is something I know the wife really looks forward to and I normally go along for the ride and be supportive. This year however I found a little games shop nestled out of the way in Camden Market called Village Games.
This was a lovely little place with walls packed to bursting with all manner of card game and board game despite the place itself only being just big enough for the sales table and about enough space for 2 customers to stand in front of it.
- I hope to write another little write up of this place in the near future, as I really cannot stress how great this shop was!
Following on from our shopping trip was our annual visit to Gilgamesh Restaurant & Bar. Surely I have written about this place before? It sells pan-Asian cuisine for a reasonable price considering it has such wonderful chefs onboard making it a regular venue featured on Master-Chef.
Everything was as we could have hoped and more this year, with a private booth usually reserved for parties of 4 or more, a personalised message & fireworks on the dessert and even free champaign (all because I mentioned in the booking that it was our 8th Anniversary).
Following on from this was the trip home complete with freshly squeezed orange juice from the market.
Roll on the rest of the week!
Thursday saw the latest test game of Override with me playing the new Trydan gang and Tom playing our revised Raiders.
This was a super fun game, with the Trydan being a very tricksy and subtle gang, and the Raiders being similar but in a drastically different way.
As per usual I failed to use my own gang to it's true potential, but that has nothing to do with the game or its subtlety and everything to do with me being a ham-fisted gamer. If you give me a scalpel, I'm going to use it as a hammer and then wonder why it snaps and stabs me in the eye.
Friday was a pretty uneventful day, mainly house work.
Saturday however was this year's Salute Wargaming Convention held at the London Excel centre.
Some of you may be surprised to read that I attended this year after last year annoyed me so much. Now, I have asked people and there is a general consensus that last year sucked balls. There was nothing new, no real new hotness and was following on from a series of years that did have lots of things to get excited about. With this in mind the problem with last year was very much the disparity (for me) between expectation and reality.
This year was different. I went out with a simple expectation: I was going to pick up some new Infinity Morats to use as Red Claw proxies in #Override. I was also going to look at the different ranges of terrain available for scifi games, ranging from the plasticard and mdf Infinity terrain, to the plastic Deadzone stuff.
The new Plasticard stuff for Infinity looks great, it is prepainted and modular, but it comes at a price premium as a result.
The older mdf stuff is also great, but again has a large ish price attached to it. This is largely due to the supplier and the Designed for Infinity stamp which appears to drive up the price notably. But as with everything else, often you are paying more for the branding than you are the product itself.
Then I saw Deadzone. This stuff looks good. It's non-descript and a lot more modular than the other stuff allowing for a greater variety of shapes and frames. It also comes with a price tag attached to it, with the starter set which if you build it as per the serving suggestion on the cover allows for a guard gate, a tower, a large room and a small room. This comes in at about £25. Cheaper than the alternatives for sure.
Then I stopped off at the Troll Trader stall where my mouth dropped. They were selling the Deadzone starter box complete with Nexus Psi campaign book for a total of £30. That's the previously mentioned terrain, plus premium grade 2x2 playmat, rule books and miniatures for only £5 more than the terrain by itself. It was a no-brained sell for me.
The remains of Saturday consisted of me building all of that, which I would be lying if I said it was easy. I'm intending to pick up another set of terrain & some more connector clips and will write a post covering my experiences with them as I try and build some more terrain pieces and then you'll be able to see for yourself how difficult an 'easy to assemble' kit really can be, and boy is it infuriating as you are trying to attach two walls via a connector only to have the connector snap in your hands.
Sunday was wind down as I prepare to return to work on Monday aka today!
So yeah; lots happening with every part of that week capable of being it's own blog post. With hope I'll be writing more of Wetware for you all soon - after all tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and an inevitable wait while there; perfect writing time!
Until then; stay safe and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
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