Wiper

October-November completions: The Ninja Saviours: Return of the Warriors I love a good brawler, but I've never been entirely enamoured with the 'single plane' version of the genre.* This put paid to that dislike; a fiddly final boss aside, I adored this from start to finish. A simple combat system, balanced and polished to perfection. Ace. Er, that's it. I've nearly finished The Outer Worlds (good job, me, on opting for Supernova difficulty to ensure I do this as slowly as possible...), and have Shenmue III(!) and Disco Elysium to go through as games I will likely finish. Oh, and AI: The Somnium Files (which I've technically reached several 'endings' of, but not the 'true' ending), and Astral Chain. And I plan to try Neofeud. And Children of Morta. And I've a strange urge to replay GunValkyrie and Dune 2. And I want to give Red Alert 2 another try. Hmm. Previously on 'Wiper actually bothers to finish some games': Frostpunk Monster Prom Ace Combat 7 Dead or Alive 6 Day of the Tentacle Total War: Three Kingdoms Untitled Goose Game Sayonara Wild Hearts * Guardian Heroes' variant with three distinct planes notwithstanding

My pile of shame is magnificent, but I endeavour to not buy extras of models I've yet to paint!

Well I can at least agree with the scourges, they're lovely models; I just don't need spares! Back to the Sisters, I have a question for those more familiar with 40k as a system. I know that WYSIWYG is important in the game (which I have no issue with, in terms of making things clear to your opponent), but does that extend to paint jobs? i.e., if I were to rock up to a tournament with a Sisters force, would I have to ensure each detachment was painted exactly in the colour scheme defined for a specific Order (e.g. Argent Shroud's silver and white) if I wanted to use said order's ability (e.g. Argent Shroud's ability to advance and fire)? I tend to favour custom colour schemes, and I'm curious if that would leave me stuck with no Order benefits.

I mean, as someone who collects/collected night goblins, wood elves, dark eldar and eldar, I can at least cover my own feelings towards the two boxsets and why one interested me and one didn't, though obviously they won't be universal. One was simply price: Looncurse at base £100 was an easier sell than BotP at £130. I appreciate that reflects the value of the models, but £100 just feels easier to justify. Second was newness: as you say, Looncurse only had a couple of unique models, but even its 'old' models were first released recently, meaning I owned none. Meanwhile, BotP consists primarily of models I've owned for around a decade, collected before I went on my last GW hiatus. It's hard to be too excited about a hover tank that I'm pretty sure is the same sprue that I first had back in the late '90s, for example! The fact is I've already owned 50% of the set for years from picking up models here and there, where Looncurse that only applied to people who'd jumped on the new releases as soon as they'd come out. The final one is the most subjective, and is to do with the desirability of the models themselves. Ignoring the age and odds of already owning e.g. a falcon or vyper already, I have to say that I can't stand the hellion models (which is why they're one part of the Dark Eldar force I've never owned), and was very much disappointed by the plastic incubi - I prefer the old designs (though have the advantage of having bought them back when they were metal, so missed out on the finecast shenanigans). Even without the latter, though, I think the fact that one set cost £100 while containing only < 2 year old models for two newly-complete factions, while the other cost £130 while being half-filled with decade+ old models for long-in-the-tooth armies, made one a rather easier sell! (also, while I appreciate that scalpers are the scum of the earth and aren't GW's fault, I do find the GW system of not giving their own stores a set allowance for pre orders a bit poor. Presumably less of an issue with towns with an FLGS that can order in their own, but when your only local is a GW (or rather, a Warhammer as they are now), and said store can only provide pre orders through the online portal, it kind of screws any locals who don't want to order online over)

On the subject of old greenskins, I've almost finished up a unit of squig hoppers for AoS, somewhat spurred on by having just bought the new Sisters of Battle box set and rather needing to clear the way for them... They're currently waiting for varnish to dry, before I add final detail to the bases (and paint their sides), but otherwise are more or less done to a degree I'm happy with. I also particularly like the mish-mash of modern plastics and classic metal models; I think it makes for quite a nice combination (links to full size images): https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZRpjQULWE9VcVtvJ8 Incidentally, all of the purple cloaks (and the bottom-right squig) were achieved using contrast paint (in some cases tidied up with a bit of highlighting after the fact, in many not), as was the spore-plume that the pink squig is leaping from. I've been quite pleased with just how much contrast paint can speed up the process! https://photos.app.goo.gl/zTVRBiiP4uMVGyz76

Worth noting that they all actually boost three of your stats - specifically, the three stats that they themselves have given values for: the perk they can get just boosts one of said stats by another 10 points. The amount they boost your skills by increases as you level up, and you can yourself get a perk which doubles the boost you get from them: by level twenty I was getting a bump of 30+ points across six stats courtesy of whichever party members, which is incredibly useful. So, e.g., with Parvati on the team I have persuasion, lockpicking and engineering above 100, despite only having levelled each to 60 (engineering to 50) myself, which is particularly helpful as playing on Supernova means completely ignoring combat skills isn't really an option!

Yeah, the only actually 'limited' part of the boxset is the special edition codex (and maybe the cards? And, technically, the dice, but considering they're just plain white dice...), but it's annoying for anyone who wanted the models before Christmas/wants the special edition codex/wanted to save some money via boxset. I'm particularly sympathetic having missed out on Looncurse at the time, and having had to shell out scalper prices for it; I get that having things sell out immediately works as marketing, but it's pretty galling for would be buyers. (of course, we also have the opposite situation with things like Blood of the Phoenix, where GW lock a handful of new figures in with a shit-ton of models which players already own and wonder why nobody buys the thing...)

Yep, and sold out just after ten past (though given how slowly the site was running by that point I would be surprised if anyone who started trying to order by even five past would have had a chance). Considering the local GW store was telling people to pop in before 11 to preorder (and that, as I assume with all GW stores, 'preordering at the store' just means logging into their terminal and accessing the website that way), I imagine there were quite a lot of frustrated would-be-buyers in town this morning. I was lucky enough to get a preorder in, but I think this was pretty crummily done.

Yeah, I'm tentatively interested,* but the '3+ years away' thing does make me think they risk missing out on much of the benefit of said free advertising. * more as it suggests we're getting a rank and file system of some description to play with than due to any particular love for the setting

This actually highlights two of the great strengths of the earlier Thief games: that because they were stealth games where the object wasn't murder you actually had a logical reason to need to explore dangerous areas in search of treasure (rather than "collectables"), and that the missions were designed to not feel like you were choosing "alternate routes" through levels, but were instead exploring believable spaces. A shame more stealth games don't opt for those approaches (though the modern Hitman games at least nail the latter).

Well that can't be right, because I like Thumper and I'm always right while everyone else is wrong, as has been demonstrated to me repeatedly throughout my life. This topic's a tricky one, because I can usually identify the reasons that a game does or doesn't work for me, but I've never fully understood why Red Alert 2 never really did it for me. I love the early Command & Conquers (even the somewhat malagined Tiberian Sun), for both the daft shlock of them and the simple, satisfying strategy underpinning them, and RA2 on its surface just delivers more of all of that goodness - and is much-loved for it - but I never warmed to it like the others, never even finished it. Not sure why. I should probably go back and try it again.

Assuming it doesn't sell out immediately (which I think is depressingly likely), I'll absolutely be getting the box-set; it helps that the post-box-set releases they've shown off also look ace. I'm even a bit tempted to try 40k for the first time since the '90s, should I manage to put together a Sisters army.

Between this and the new Sisters of Battle, are GW trying to bankrupt me?

Same here. It's partially an age thing; the difference between 20-year-old me and 25-year-old me is far greater than that between 25-year-old me and 35-year-old me, so the time between feels less significant. And it's partially that the pace of game design change is ever-slowing, so the games don't feel as though they've evolved as much (and of course even the games from 2004-2009 feel like subtle evolutions compared to those between 1999 and 2004, never mind 1994 and 1999).

I'd like to agree, but both Disco Elysium and Sayonara Wildhearts probably just edge it for me. It's assuredly the best game of 2004, mind! I've also just realised that Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines came out in November 2004, so that automatically makes it a great month (even if we did have to wait close to a decade for a properly finished version of the game to exist).